hello fellow ww's
I want to finish up my shop tour with this series of green machines. The first green one is as the title suggests - A Wide Belt sander. I see from my limited time here at the creek that many of you have sanding machines of some sort. Some would say that any sanding surfacer ranks in the "nice to have" as opposed to the "must have". I would agree that it is a nice to have and not a must have. Having said that, I have found it very usefull in a number of ways ( figured lumber and 1/4 and thinner stock for example, as well as very wide boards ) .
I am not an expert on wide belts, but here is what I have found out ( some may have more expertise and wish to correct me which is fine ). There are 2 basic styles of these machines. #1 platen style #2 Contact drum.
Most of the machines that you run across are platen style and excell at sanding veneer and such where you only want to remove .002" at a pass. The platen can be raised up so that the smaller contact rollers touch the work piece. This allows for a more stock to be removed ( .030 ). Some feel that platen machines are not ideally suited for solid wood processing, but make the compromise by allowing the platen to be raised up out of the way. The problem with these machines is that the diameter of the contact rollers is pretty small ( compared to a true contact drum machine )
The contact drum machines are not very well suited for veneer sanding but are ideal for solid wood processing, like most ww's do. Contact drum machines come in a couple of drum sizes. From what I could find out the most popular is a 6" dia drum. There are also machine with extra large drums in the 12" dia range. It turns out the the machine I purchased from the original owner is one of those extra large drum machines. I lucked out, because it was only after buying the machine that I found out some of this information.
I bought this from a dealer who took it as a trade for a new machine. It had only one owner in a 2 or 3 man shop. I got all the original paper work with it and original manuals. These are the types of machines you want to look for. My advise is if you want one of these used, stay away from "ebay" and the other auction sites, those machines are wooped.
This machine uses pneumatic tracking and has worked fine. most modern machines use photo eyes, but there is nothing wrong with the older technology if you have some idea of how to adjust it.
If you do go looking for one of these machines, make sure to carefully inspect the surface of the contact drum. Mine has one small score in it that causes a ridge of a few mills. They can get very badly damaged if someone has fed a board that is just too thick for the machine to process.
This particular machine has a 20 hp cast iron beast of a motor that runs the drum. It is quite fun to start up.
enjoy