Please help with A Drum sander question

[Dave Dionne]

Hi All
I have been gone for a while but it is good to start working wood again.
I recently acquired an old Performax S/T drum sander with a 2 HP Baldor motor and feed belt. I don't think that the feed belt was the original sold with the S/T kit but could be mistaken. I am new to drum sanders and have a couple of basic questions.

1) there is paper on the drum already which I plan on removing tonight (just got the sander last night) but I can see that there is a black felt or cotton wrapping underneath on the drum is that normal?

2) How important are the pressure rollers for sanding? There is a set on this home made and needs replacement. I am working on that now have a couple of ideas that I am going to run by a very good fabricator/machinist friend of mine and see what he thinks but can I do basic sanding without them all together. It seems that this sander that was made to run off a radial arm saw didn't have them to start with.

3) How important is the feed belt speed? I am going to hook up a restate to control speed but I was just wondering.

Thanks for you help
Dave

[Howard Klepper]

1) It's velcro. Your machine needs velcro hook backed sandpaper.
2) Critical if you want to minimize snipe.
3) Very important if you work with a variety of woods and widths. In general, feed as fast as you can without bogging down the machine. You generate less heat that way. Also usually better if you are bogging down to take a lighter cut rather than slow the feed.

[David Kumm]

I would contact the people at Supermax. I think they developed your machine before they sold the smaller Performax line to Jet. That was a rare sander and is evidently different from the regular machines as no other Performax used velcro. Hopefully they will have specific info for you. Dave

[Greg Portland]

Feed speed is crucial; you can easily melt the velcro if you feed to quickly.

[Dave Dionne]

Thanks for the input and suggestions, I called supermax and they did indeed
make this unit and they said they never offered anything with Velcro.
I removed part of the wrapped sand paper that was one it and checked the material and it is not Velcro just some kind of woven material looks like it may be glued on so this weekend will work on removing the material and cleaning the drum.

Thanks again for your help

Dave