My new woodchipper

[Paul Grothouse]

Thought you guys would like to see my new tooling for my CNC. I asked Schmidt for something that I could use to rough out blanks. 3-1/2" D x 5" long. Replacable Carbide inserts, all mounted up to a HSK arbor.

Nasty peice of tooling.

[Jim Underwood]

Eeeayow! That'll chew up some wood in a hurry! What are you making with this?

[Dan Hintz]

And here I thought a jointer was bad... at least a jointer doesn't move the cutter. I would want to stand well outside the boundaries of that CNC!

[Bruce Page]

What RPM will you run that monster? That is a lot of mass that will, um, get interesting if it starts to chatter.

[Bruce Boone]

That tooling looks pretty expensive too!

[Jim Underwood]

I doubt that it would vibrate. An aluminum spiral head wouldn't weigh much, and the spiral? Dang... those things will CHEW up some wood without even thinking about it...

[Mike Heidrick]

Heck with the tooling I want to see the spindle.

[Paul Grothouse]

We make heavy solid wood products, solid wood tops, solid wood table parts etc. I have been using 3/4" x 6" carbide spirals for most of our roughing passes. Those bits cost ~$400 ea. I have snapped one already. They also get dull and last ~10 hours of machining, then have to be sharpened and I have to put in tool wear offsets (PIA). I needed something bigger and faster that would take out more material. This whole setup cost ~$800, so I figure two bits and I'm there. The carbide inserts are about a buck a peice, and have four sides and last forever. My planer uses them and we probably plane 3000 bdft a week and we turn the inserts twice a year. I can also run my 1-1/4" shaper cutters on the arbor, so it is a mulitasker.

I will run this at 10k rpm to start, it is laser balanced, I am not concerned about vibration, my CNC spindle is 15hp and can carry a 25lb aggregate tool around no problem. For comparision my SCMI shaper has a 10hp motor and I can run dual 12" tenon cutters on that no problem, it's not really that different. I wouldn't hesitate to put a cutter like this on my shaper and use it with a follower bearing and a template.

I will post of video of a test flight, rest assured it will make some chips.

[Bruce Page]

I will run this at 10k rpm to start, it is laser balanced, I am not concerned about vibration, my CNC spindle is 15hp and can carry a 25lb aggregate tool around no problem.

Paul, I Googled what a "Andi Stratus Pro" is.. it looks pretty stout.

[Jim Underwood]

I'd bet that steel HSK tool holder weighs more than the tool body with all the inserts in it....