Help with Planer adjustments

[Rob Holcomb]

I have a Grizzly G0453 15" planer and I need to adjust it as it has never been properly adjusted since I bought it. What tool(s) would you recommend I purchase to make the adjustments? I assume some sort of dial indicator will be necessary but which kind would be easiest? There's a ton of them on the market. I know Grizzly recommends their "Rotocator". I want to be thorough and also want the right tools to do the job. Also, if I can afford it, I'm thinking about upgrading to a spiral cutterhead but Grizzly offers two. Their model H7655 15" Indexable Spiral Cutterhead and the Byrd Shelix model H7768 15" Cutterhead. I know those of you that have one or the other have personal preferences but I'm looking for information on what the physical differences are between the two cutterheads. Thanks in advance.

[Cary Falk]

I have a Go453Z. I adjusted my bed rollers by sliding a block of wood over the bed and rollers till the rollers just barely moved when the block just passed over. I adjuste dthe outfeed roller by running a piece a wood through it and make equal turns on each side of the roller till the roller left no marks but still fed the wood. I adjusted the infeed rollers that same way but adjusted it till it didn't do that violent slap when a board was fed into it. I have a dial indicator but found this way to be faster and easier. My planer runs great now even though I didn't use a fancy gage.

[glenn bradley]

I use an inexpensive Harbor Freight dial indicator attached to a 1/2/3 block. Remember, you are looking for a differential measurement so as long as the indicator can reasonably measure the difference between where it starts and ends, the actual measurement is unimportant. The open-end and hex wrenches required come with the machine but, are generally available metric sizes. Refer to your manual. It is available online from Grizzly if you don't have one. The sequence is probably laid out but, I do it like this (the whole list of tasks take under an hour):

• Adjust infeed and outfeed tables flat to main table
• Adjust table rollers to table difference
• Align cutterhead to table at BDC across its length
• Adjust chip breaker to cutterhead difference
• Adjust feed roller(s) to cutterhead difference
• Adjust feed roller tension to suit your mainly milled material (remember to oil these cups every 8 hours of operation)
• Pull top plate and remove that silly piece of foam rubber that causes chips to fall back onto your material

If you have not changed the gear oil at 40 hours (IIRC, check your manual), go ahead and do that too. It is the small operational maintenance tasks that avoid costly failures ;-)

[Bruce Wrenn]

Grab hold of a copy of John White's book, "Care and Repair of Shop Machines." Money well spent, IMHO

[Russell Smallwood]

Hey Rob,

Me too.

I ended up springing for the Rotocator after a first attempt using my iGaging Digital Saw Guage

Link to said saw guage.

I wasn't really happy with the results. To eliminate a few variables, I sprung for the rotocator. Yes, it made the job easier but so did the fact that I was going at it for the 2nd time.

Is it worth $95? Not really sure, but at least I know that I have the right tool for the job.

There are many people in this world who are more mechanically inclined than I am that can adjust one of these to within .0002 using nothing but an old t-shirt and a broom handle, but I'm not one of them I'm afraid. After 2 attempts, and with pretty decent results after the 2nd pass I learned:

1.)It is a luxury to have the setup tool that the manufacturer recommends to do the job, but a setup like Glen's would suffice as well.
2.)Getting this machine dialed in is a pain
3.)Getting this machine dialed in takes patience and time.
4.)If you're like me, It's highly likely that your first go around will produce mediocre results.

As far as the spiral goes. I have the stock version and it works great, no complaints. Don't have any experience with the Byrd

[Keith Hankins]

You can get a decent dial indicator form griz for 30 bucks and make what you need. Watch this video and you will see what i mean. While not for your specific model, they prettymuch all operate the same principle.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...89700074242027#

Here's the set I have of dial indicators that I used to check my TS.

http://www.grizzly.com/products/Magn...ombo-pk-/H3022

[woody dixon]

Glen:

I like your dial indicator with the 123 block. How did you attach it since the threaded hole in the block is 3/8 inch and i believe most if not all of the lugs on the back of indicators are 1/4 inch?


Woody Dixon

[Danny Hamsley]

I have the rotocator. My GO453Z really purs. Perfect cuts. It has the grizzly spiral head. The finish could not be smoother. I also bought the GO544 Pro Planer, so having the rotocator was very nice.

[Jim Andrew]

Glenn, where do you get the block? Thanks for posting that, am sure many of us will be needing to do this soon.
Rob, I have the Grizzly helical cutterhead on my planer, it works great, and the Byrd on my jointer, it works fine also. The difference is on the Byrd, the cutters are angled slightly so they kind of shear the wood off, hence the name shelix. The Grizzly cutterhead has square facing cutters, and it works fine also. Can find no difference in using the machines. If anything, the helical cutter takes more power than the straight cutterhead, but you don't need to sharpen the helical. All I do is take the spray sawblade cleaner and a toothbrush occasionally to clean the cutters. They do build up pitch, which increases drag on the cutterhead, same as a dirty sawblade. Cleaning is all it takes to keep it cutting like new, and of course replacing any broken cutters. I have not had to replace any cutters on my Grizzly, but used to have to replace them regularly on the Woodmaster I had.