Shaper Cutters/Input?

[David Kumm]

Champ fond is Taiwanese and has been around for a while. I would not buy them as they may be great it will be tough to resell. Marlowe Mcgraw has a Northfield for 1900 and Barry Stup (sp)? has a bunch of machines for sale in PA. His stuff looks nice and he has a website set up. Some are listed on WW but there are others. Marlowe is a good guy and his stuff is nice. Dave

[joe milana]

That Northfield that Marlowe M has has a 3/4" spindle & single speed. I'd like it as a second machine, but do you think it is versatile enough to use as a primary machine?

[Mike Heidrick]

I'm not sure how to pull a pic of the net....but if you google "Amana Profile Pro" you'll see what all the fuss is about

JeffD

[Mike Heidrick]

CMT set from amazon

[Carpenter Mark]

Maggi/Steff feeders have been around for a long time, very durable, easy to use. Their tower castings are very good too, which is usually what takes the most abuse with feeders. Keep the tapers clean and dry, don't over tighten and you have a tool that lasts a lifetime

[David Kumm]

That Northfield that Marlowe M has has a 3/4" spindle & single speed. I'd like it as a second machine, but do you think it is versatile enough to use as a primary machine?

You would have to talk to Marlowe but spindles should be available and if a step pulley doesn't work a vfd would as that 7.5 hp motor has grunt even at lower rpm. I would prefer a newer Euro as primary though. Look at Jon Rael's Martin on WW. Dave

[Peter Quinn]

It's a pretty common misunderstanding to think more cutters cut faster,in fact the more cutters involved the slower the feed must be .That is why the spiral head "upgrades" to planers and jointers require a slower feed speed than what would be possible with 2 knives. One easy way to see this is comparing the speed possible with a one flute router bit compared with a two flute. Guys who have been in the business for years are startled by the difference. Sounds like you have a good shaper, if the head you are using is the common 4 inch corg. Your rpm setting should be at least 6000,and 8000 with a small knife projection.

I was hoping someone more eloquent (and more brief) than I would pick this up, but here goes my half wit understanding of this complex calculation. More cutters MAY cut faster, but they don't alone tell the whole story. The router bit one flute/two flute analogy is an over simplification, and the primary limiting factor there is spindle or shank rigidity, second might be power depending on the router. Sure, a single flute might offer a faster feed rate in some material due to less cutter in play at a given time, but the surface quality is diminished. You would have to double the RPM's to maintain the same surface quality. It is my understanding that most single flute bits are for sizing or rough work, not for show quality surfaces. The multi flute spiral heads for planers allow a faster feed rate at the same surface quality, assuming there is available power to do the work. In the case of the shelix heads I have found they actually allow a significantly faster feed rate because rather than taking three large cuts in a given revolution they are always taking a series of evenly spaced small cuts, there is less knife in the wood at any given moment, less stress on the motor. Machines where they don't work well are generally under powered and can't handle the increased number of flutes.

Think about TS blades, or even BS blades. There chip clearance becomes an issue. An 80Z blade would choke trying to rip 8/4 stock, but a 20Z industrial rip blade eats it like butter. Power is also a limiting factor there. You CAN rip thick hardwood with a plywood blade, but most people are not strong enough to push that hard, and its not safe to push that hard anyway. Plus you risk excessive heat build up at slower feed rates. The equation is more complicated than a simple "More teeth Less teeth" rule can explain.

For a person making moldings or other decorative wood objects the primary criteria is surface quality. Its all that really matters, so everything gets pegged to that with some accommodation for tooling life. You need around 17-20 cuts per inch to give a decent easily sanded surface. Some species will tolerate more CPI's, some less assuming sharp cutters. At a give spindle speed and feed rate (and given cutter diameter), adding 50% more knives (2Z to 3Z) will give more cuts per inch, so you can expect to be able to increase feed speed and get the identical cuts per inch quality of surface. The limiting factors remain spindle rigidity and power. Even large spindle shapers have their limits, and wood has its limits too. In theory you could double your feed rate by doubling the number of knives in the cutter head, in practice this may not be possible, but a faster feed rate should be possible all else remaining equal. A lot depends on the depth of cut and the hardness and machinability of the material in question too. So I'd argue that more cutters doesn't always mean a faster feed rate, but on a shaper, almost always does for a given surface quality. We should really be talking about "surface feet per minute" to discuss the cutters speed, but that combines diameter with RPM's and seems to make the eye's glaze over fast, so I'm not going to mention it here. Oops.

As an example, they use 4 knife heads on many through molders. I'm not a molder operator, but I've worked with a few good operator and asked lots of questions. For lots of cuts, they simply run two knives and leave the the other two slots empty, or chuck up balancing blanks to maintain gib tension to keep the heads cutting square. Thats probably more info than any casual shaper user will ever want or need. On some of the larger crowns and casings, they chuck up four knives, two make the full profile, two hog the deepest part of the cut. This allows a faster feed rate, or at least doesn't require a slower rate as would be necessary with only two knives. But even on a multi head molder with a 40MM spindle and 15HP motor per head, spindle rigidity and power are finite, so feed rate is not doubled. An example more people may be familiar with are the Freud quadra cut bits and cutters. I've found you can feed those a bit faster though double it isn't always possible. I swear its not the lawyers driving this issue, its the engineers! In any event, my lawyer has never even helped me set up a shaper.

There are some pretty good articles on the topic, some specifically about machining metal which is not an exact parallel but shares some similarities. There is a lengthy discussion of this in the Spindle Molder Hand book for those who want to know way more about this than I do or care to. And Rod Sheridan has some had some excellent posts explaining these ideas with more clarity and knowledge than I can seem to muster. My approach has always been more hands on and intuitive, I make adjustments based on what I'm looking at in the wood and the calculator never gets involved, rarely change spindle speeds over the diameter tooling I use either. But feed rate definitely gets adjusted quite regularly and is my primary means of controlling surface quality as other factors change. And all else being equal, I like more flutes more better. I can in fact feed my 4Z garniga rabbit head at nearly exactly double that of my 2Z 150MM garniga rabbit head. Its sad that I had to buy one of each just to prove this theory, but I can't seems to work the calculator on my smart phone.

[Stephen Cherry]

One other factor is the chip thickness limit built into the cutter- I think that the euro cutters just do not project a lot of blade to the wood, so the thickness of the chip reaches a limit. And with just so many cuts per minute, you would be limited by the chip thicness limit times teh cuts per minute, as an absolute max feed rate. Maybe single cutter router bits, intended for fast cutting with good chip disposal, just allow a thicker chip as part of the cutter design.

[Mel Fulks]

My reply to Ron Bontz was correct. Please read his post again. A number of times I have been in shops that did not have any single flute router bits because proprietors thought they would cut slower. I was glad to help them. Yes,there is a difference in surface quality, but if another operation is going to make that moot ,then it is smart to do the current part of the project as fast as possible. It is for reasons of safety that the speed setting of a shaper should always be checked before pressing the start button. If the last guy was using a 2 and 3/4 inch carbide cutter with the appropriate 10,000 rpm setting I really don't want to use that speed for a set up with old style collars and knives hanging out as much as 4 inches.The withholding of information by manufacturers acting on the advice of their lawyers is a fact.Obviously discussion of that type of can not be on a public site.

[Mel Fulks]

Yes.Its cutting more at one time .I am not an engineer,for me frying eggs starts with opening the refrigerator....not making an iron skillet. Sometimes in these threads I think about a real savvy foreman from long ago. He told me ,"It's impossible for anyone I work with to have a better way than me for doing anything...because as soon as I see a better way I make it MY way".Show me a boss who cares about who thought of a good idea ,a week after the roll-out he can't remember who thought of it,but he wants everyone using it.

[Larry Edgerton]

There are also euroblock sets that have two knives and two dummy chip limiters. I have one, starts with a S, sounds German? Anyway it works well and would maybe be a better choice for a beginner for safety reasons.

Larry

[J. Greg Jones]

There are also euroblock sets that have two knives and two dummy chip limiters. I have one, starts with a S, sounds German? Anyway it works well and would maybe be a better choice for a beginner for safety reasons.

Larry

The Laguna set that the OP linked to in the first post of this thread has the chip limiters and are marked MAN-one reason that they cost more than the comparable CMT/Amana sets. I've never understood why CMT, Amana, etc. have not at least offered chip limiters as an option in the US market.

[Jeff Duncan]

The Laguna set that the OP linked to in the first post of this thread has the chip limiters and are marked MAN-one reason that they cost more than the comparable CMT/Amana sets. I've never understood why CMT, Amana, etc. have not at least offered chip limiters as an option in the US market.

I have not used those sets but could hazard a guess......they're more expensive

I can't tell for sure by the info posted, but it seems like your going to need matching chip limiters to each of the profiles your using? If that's so then they're going to be more costly as well as I would guess, more difficult/time consuming to set up than the traditional style Euro blocks. I'm not saying they don't have merit, but people in this country shop on price...good, bad, or indifferent....that's the truth.

JeffD

[Peter Kelly]

The Laguna set that the OP linked to in the first post of this thread has the chip limiters and are marked MAN-one reason that they cost more than the comparable CMT/Amana sets. I've never understood why CMT, Amana, etc. have not at least offered chip limiters as an option in the US market.

If you don't buy from Laguna, that one actually costs about the same as the Amana/CMT one. Woodtech tooling has it: http://woodtechtooling.com/Insert_To...ing.html#GUHDO

[Jeff Duncan]

That Northfield that Marlowe M has has a 3/4" spindle & single speed. I'd like it as a second machine, but do you think it is versatile enough to use as a primary machine?

Here's my opinion for what it's worth.....the traditional American shapers are great machines for setting up to do large runs. They can mill stock all day long and are fairly simple and robust machines. The bigger Euro shapers are also pretty heavily built but have the advantage of being more flexible. Much better fences that are easily set up, and better spindle elevation controls to really fine tune your setup. The system for utilizing interchangeable spindles is much better on the Euro machines as well. They also usually have brakes and spindle locks which are really nice to haves. It's funny b/c I never thought twice about brakes until I bought a machine that had them. Now 2 of my shapers have them and it really bothers me using the shaper that doesn't! It's so nice to be able to stop that spindle quick if you need/want to! Oh I should note some of the older American style shapers have brakes too!

At the end of the day either style of machine will get the job done, I find for me personally the Euro style is a better fit

good luck,
JeffD