Help with Delta DC-380 Planer

[Sven Asnien]

Good Morning,

I have owned this 15" Delta planer for about 5 years now (second owner) and have been generally happy with it. I decided to bite the bullet and disassemble/rebuild it in hopes of resolving a minor oil leak and truing it up a bit. Its never really planed a board perfectly parallel, but since most of the boards have been 4-6" wide, I have been flipping the board over to level out the differences. On average, I'd say a 4" board might be off 0.01" across the width.

Here's what I've done so far:
Aligned the planer bed with four corners of the top (head). Before I started, the unit was off 0.018" left to right. Took the better part of an afternoon messing with the gears and chain assembly, but I am happy with the new state of 0.003" from left to right (left side is lower) and believe that is the best I'm going to get.

Installed new blades and have them sitting within +/- 0.001 across all three blades. I used the original Delta knife setting gauge and feeler gauges. I had the motor completely off which really helped me get my hands around the situation. Don't think they have ever been this good!

Replaced both bearings.

Buttoned everything back up, and planed a 4" wide board. While it did turn out glass smooth (new blades will do that), I measured a difference of 0.011" with my dial caliper.

Measured the distance between planer bed and the four corners of the top, and it is holding true at 0.003.

I then measured the distance from the planer bed to the cutterhead (Actual Cutterhead, not the knife blades) and was shocked to see that I was off 0.022" across the full 15" length of the cutterhead.

Fortunately, It is high on the right hand side of the planer, so I am going to try inserting a 0.025" shim between the gearbox housing and the head. I'm hoping that will do the trick.

Any other thoughts/suggestions/experience any one can offer? Am I going down the wrong path with shims? What is an acceptable difference that you accept when planing a board. Is it realistic to expect something within 0.003" across a 4" board?

Thanks!

Sven

[Matt Day]

The critical distance is obviously from the blades to the planer bed. Sounds like you're 0.001" measurement is the distance of the blades relative to each other.

I plan to adjust my planer as well soon, and plan to set my Oneway multi gauge on the planer bed and using the dial indicator to align each knive so it's measured relative to the bed, rather than aligning the knives, then the head to the bed.

[Sven Asnien]

The critical distance is obviously from the blades to the planer bed. Sounds like you're 0.001" measurement is the distance relative to each other.

Correct - The blade measurement (+/- 0.001) was high/low to all the blades. I would expect to see the distance from blade height to planer bed to relate to the 0.0 - 0.022 figure. I didn't actually measure that value as not a lot of room to work with feeler gauges and sharp blades and bad lighting!.

I'm out to McMaster-Carr in Aurora, OH to pick up shim stock. I say that because your sig shows you in Chagrin Falls; I'm in Solon! Small world...

[Matt Day]

Sven - sorry for the double post, sometime the iPhone interface does that for some reason.

Funny you're so close! I actually might need some shim washers for my bandsaw and would go to MC. My buddy's wife is the warehouse manager there.

[Peter Quinn]

I've been down that same road with the same planer. Delta actually had very good instructions for the steps to do this in their manuals. IIR first step is put in blades the specified projection from the head. That's critical. The planer came with a guage to set the projection and set it parallel to the head. Everything else gets set to the knives. It's a circular fight. all that is required and what is actually best is a guage block of end grain dry hardwood and feeler gauges. You set the bed parallel to the knives (by adjusting the gears/chain/absolute knuckle busting) , or really adjust the head parallel to the bed using the knives as your reference. Then you go after the front to back alignment, which is far less critical, then recheck the head is parallel, then readjust the front to read...sneak up on it. Once the knives read parallel to the table, adjust indeed roller, out feed roller, bed rollers, and chip breaker height versus the bed, again setting all parallel versus the bed using the same guage block and the specified gap per manual. The order is important, always head parallel first using fresh knives set an equal projection from the head. Took me a whole day of pain, got it within .003" edge to edge with no snipe and good feed, has never varied in 8 years. Previous owner used to mill pallet wood and when it got stuck he bashed it through with a 4x4.

[Sven Asnien]

I've been down that same road with the same planer. Delta actually had very good instructions for the steps to do this in their manuals. IIR first step is put in blades the specified projection from the head. That's critical. The planer came with a guage to set the projection and set it parallel to the head. Everything else gets set to the knives. It's a circular fight. all that is required and what is actually best is a guage block of end grain dry hardwood and feeler gauges. You set the bed parallel to the knives (by adjusting the gears/chain/absolute knuckle busting) , or really adjust the head parallel to the bed using the knives as your reference. Then you go after the front to back alignment, which is far less critical, then recheck the head is parallel, then readjust the front to read...sneak up on it. Once the knives read parallel to the table, adjust indeed roller, out feed roller, bed rollers, and chip breaker height versus the bed, again setting all parallel versus the bed using the same guage block and the specified gap per manual. The order is important, always head parallel first using fresh knives set an equal projection from the head. Took me a whole day of pain, got it within .003" edge to edge with no snipe and good feed, has never varied in 8 years. Previous owner used to mill pallet wood and when it got stuck he bashed it through with a 4x4.

Yep, this thing looks like it was built to handle pallet wood and not skip a beat.

I'm happy to report that I was able to install a couple of 0.025" shims between the gearbox and the upper frame without too much difficulty. Closed everything up and ran a 10" wide board through the planer and noted the thickness difference from edge to edge averaged 0.0045". Pretty good for a $12 investment in shim stock. I'm debating whether I want to press my luck and install a few more shims and see if I can improve that number.

I'll probably hold off on the shim idea as I have a bit of snipe on the tail end of the board. Going to play with eliminating that snipe and hopefully it doesn't throw my parallelism out the window. I feel 100% better right now, and looking forward to planing some rough Cherry in the near future.


Thanks for all the suggestions,

Sven