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Thread: How to make sanding faster with current setup?

  1. #1

    How to make sanding faster with current setup?

    So I’ve recently been in charge of making doors in a cabinet shop and I’ve been trying to make everything more efficient and less time consuming. So far sanding is the largest time sink. For sanding machines and tools there is:
    • Timesavers Series 3300 widebelt sander. 52” bed, 4 heads at P120, P150, P180, P220(the 4th head is a combination platen and drum)
    • Timesavers Series 4300 orbital sander, 36” bed, 2 heads(2 platens each) all four platens have 80 micron sanding film which is about P180 I believe ( I’m not sure if they are all supposed to be the same, but that is how it is when I started working here), following the platens is a brush head going 1300 RPM.
    • Sioux DA Orbital sander with Klingspor pads and P150 sanding disc
    • Porter Cable Heavy Duty sander model 505 with P150 sanding paper


    Some notes about the machines.
    • The widebelt TimeSaver is only 3-4 years old and has only had one accident: an 1 1/2” thick piece of stock was being sanded and another person pressed the automatic thickness setting to .780” while the piece was under the 4th head. The platen(graphite and felt I believe were replaced) was damaged and the bed had to be recalibrated. Both have been fixed professionally, but now anything under 2 Ft tends to coast without a longer piece directly behind it when before you could send 12” long piece without it coasting. I’m guessing the hold down rollers need adjusting.
    • The orbital Timesaver 2nd head fuse overheats but the head still remains on until the machine is turned off . Then the fuse needs to be reset with a press of a button to be able to turn on again.


    The current sanding process is as follows:
    1. Doors are unclamped from clamping machine and glue scraped
    2. Sent through the widebelt taking off 1/32” each side .780” to .750”. 2 passes only, unless sanding a harder wood such as hard maple or hickory.
    3. Profiles are shaped on the door and edge sanded. The profiles are sanded if need be.
    4. Fully hand sanded front and back with Sioux orbital sanders to remove any cross scratch.
    5. Sent though the orbital Timesaver. The method I’ve been taught to do is lightly use a pencil on the face and send it through and raise the bed until it takes off the graphite from the pencil. The wood comes out really smooth.
    6. Doors are hinged and mounted on cabinets then finish sanded with the Porter Cable sander.


    I’m wondering if it is possible to minimize or remove any need for hand sanding with the Sioux orbital sanders. My boss mentioned once that the orbital is supposed to remove the cross scratch without the need to hand sand. I have tried not hand sanding before and sending it through orbital. However for the orbital to even start taking off some of scratch I have to raise the bed to .710” when the thickness of the wood is about .750”. Doing it this way lightly vibrates the bed and takes at least 3 passes at this setting on both sides. This is obviously not much faster than hand sanding. Is the orbital not setup correctly or is the widebelt leaving too deep of a scratch? Would having P150 sanding film be better for the orbital?

    Any help is appreciated!

  2. #2
    Some of the equipment you mentioned ,I've never seen. What I would try is hand orbital sanding with abrasive one grit coarser than the grit last used on the wide belt sander. The orbital sanders are sold in different orbit sizes and I've worked in commercial shops that paid no attention to which they were buying. It's possible you need to do last sanding with a smaller orbit.

  3. #3
    Why not go from the widebelt straight into the orbital sander? I would think that would be the tool of choice for removing the bulk of your cross grain? With finish grit being 220, that should melt away with almost zero effort. Then onto final sanding with an orbital.

    What are your heads set at in the widebelt for removal? There's a chart on woodweb somewhere explaining how much material a given grit can remove, and how deep a scratch it leaves behind for the next grit to remove. Also, what is the platen set at?

    I would personally run that four head with 80g/120/150/180g with the heads and platen being staged correctly for height, but I'm not a whiz. You want the 80 grit to remove the imperfections, every grit after that is just removing the previous scratch.

    What are you running for abrasives, specifically the last head? Paper or cloth backed? Paper leaves a much better finish on a platen.

    I haven't used a Sioux sander in quite some time, I don't remember them being very impressive for a DA orbital. I remember the Dynabrade being much nicer. We switched from the Dynabrade pneumatic sanders to Mirka electric sanders a few years ago and I'm very pleased at how well they work. Plus you're not burning basically 5hp in compressor to turn a little pneumatic motor.

    My last real job, we had a Timesavers orbital, sander. I wasn't impressed with what it did as a finished product, but the DA work after going through it was pretty dang quick. At the time they had two separate dual head machines. Doors would go through on each face through each machine once, then through the orbital sander on each face once, then it was on to sanding with a hand held orbital. I remember it being a rather cranky machine as well. It's been 13 years since I worked there though.



    Might want to look into a shape and sand for edge profiles, also for panel raising if you're moving a big volume.

    I run a two head Apex sander in our shop. We're taking almost .030" off per pass, (starting at .8125" going to .760") using 120/180 with the second head being a combo, and it abuses the snot out of the abrasives. We're lucky to get eight hours of run time out of a set of belts. I figure 3-4 minutes of time sanding at the downdraft table, (if it's flat panel and you're just sanding the R&S), including breaking edges on average. I'd bet you could almost cut that in half if you're more or less just leveling out the sheen with 150g with the parts having gone through that orbital and all of the defecting is done. We do mostly inset, so our edge profile sanding is non-existent. Properly set up with a four head, I'd think you'd get a few hundred hours out of a set of belts. I only say that because I called the company I bought my sander from with some questions a few months after I got it, we were chatting, and he said they sold a six head to a three shift shop, they went six months before swapping belts.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Mel Fulks View Post
    It's possible you need to do last sanding with a smaller orbit.

    Sanding wood with a 3/32 versus 3/16 orbit is miserable and unnecessary if you ask me. Those finer orbits are more for sanding finish and paint than wood. Though some woods are just swirly and a pain to sand.

  5. #5
    I think they have at least three orbits. The largest is worse about swirls. Middle might be just right ,you certainly don't want to leave the choice to a in office buyer who might not even ask or listen to orbit size....as that is out of their sphere.

  6. #6
    I have tried sending the doors into the orbital right after the widebelt, but it doesn’t seem to take any cross scratch off at all unless I really force it to by going 1/32” to 1/16” under the material size on the orbital. Doing this causes the orbital bed to shake/ vibrate. So I don’t think that is normal. Plus it needs to go through a minimum of 3 passes for each side to fully remove the scratch. That doesn’t seem right either.

    Im not sure what the heads are set at for the widebelt, I’ll have to look into it. But it does have dial indicators on the heads for that I believe. As for the type of abrasive it’s VSM paper backed, alternatively we also use 3M paper backed from time to time. The belts last a decent amount of time, about a month to two months doing 4 kitchens a week. Also not sure how to check what the platen is set at. I have seen that chart you are talking about though. The stock we get comes in smoothly planed at .8125” so I think that the P120 works decent but I’m only just starting to learn more about abrasives.

    For the DAs, it doesn’t take long to remove the cross scratch at all, it does seem to melt away. But I’m under the assumption that’s the job for the orbital Timesaver.

    We do have a Unique shape and sand for raised panels, but only one profile sadly. It works like a charm though. We mainly have two profiles for edges, a cove or an 1/8” bullnose/roundover. The cove has a large cutter on a shaper and comes out fairly nice but with a little bit of chatter. For the 1/8” we only have a router bit and I have to manually sand the edges on an edge sander and break the back edge. I’ve been bugging the boss to get a shaper cutter head for 1/8” for a while. Another thing is the idea of possibly having a brush sander along the fence for the shaper to sand the edge profile.

    I’d love to learn how to have those Timesavers set up perfectly so my jobs easier haha.

  7. #7
    The heavy equipment you have should make sanding doors a breeze, but clearly they are not set up properly- especially the orbital machine. The way you are doing it now you might as well sand after the wide belt with a good (Dynabrade, Mirka) handheld RO at 180# and stop there. Get a qualified technician in to help you.

    The best commentary I've seen on the sanding process has been by Adam West on the surfprep web site (http://surfprepsanding.com/2014/03/3...ng-make-sense/. The link includes a chart for optimal stock removal at different grits.) I don't know if they do site visits but it would be worth calling them. Your Timesavers dealer should be able to help you out. If you state your location some nearby shop owners may be able to suggest a good tech in your area.

    Start with the hold-down on the widebelt infeed- there is a real and dangerous potential for kickback there. Do you have a manual that explains basic setup procedures?

  8. #8
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    Cutting out the hand work is the best line of attack. Get a tech in to set the machines up correctly, because they should do this job easily with not much more than knocking off the sharp edges by hand. Stay with the tech while he works to understand what he is doing and what the machines should be doing. Management may be inclined to think they are wasting money doing this, but the cost of the tech will be recovered in productivity gains in a short time. I am especially concerned that the orbital is struggling to do anything. It should clean up 180 easily, let alone 220. Keep at it. You are thinking so you are already ahead of 90% of the opposition. If you can't get budget for a tech, adjust one thing at a time so that you can isolate the problems. Cheers
    Every construction obeys the laws of physics. Whether we like or understand the result is of no interest to the universe.

  9. #9
    I think you need to get the machines dialed in. Get each head set correctly to remove the correct scratch, then move onto getting the orbital sander optimized and in good repair. If that means bringing a tech in for a day, so be it. It's a cheap investment with a monstrous return.

    I'd also talk to somebody about abrasives. It doesn't matter how smooth your material comes in, it's about how much material you are removing. I know in my case I'm pushing both heads beyond what they should be, but it's a trade off of switching belts and making one more pass per face. It's wasteful, but less expensive for me to hammer through the belts than it is to pay two guys running it through two more times.


    Kevin, I'm 90% sure Adam West was the dude I was thinking of, and I'm pretty sure I've read that article before. That's good stuff and it was good to read again. It kinda affirms what I thought about starting with a courser belt, but still being able to remove the scratch with three more grits.


    Also remember that your combo heads are hitting twice, once at the drum and once at the platen. So according to that chart, if you're taking .002" off with the drum, and another .002" off with the platen for a total of .004", you can easily get through the scratch left from a 150 grit belt which is .002" deep.

    You want the first head removing all the stock, every head after doing nothing but removing the scratch from the first head.



    I am a little jealous you've got a four head btw. I didn't have the funds or the space at my old location for a three head and I'm really regretting not making that happen somehow.
    Last edited by Martin Wasner; 12-13-2017 at 1:53 PM.

  10. #10
    I’ve been reading his articles, and it’s starting to make some sense. For the current setup we should only be taking off about .022” instead of about .031”. I’ll have to let the boss know if he wants the doors done faster he needs to spend some on a technician haha. Thanks for linking that Kevin. And great insight Martin

    Before we had the 4 head there was a 3 head. That thing acted up everyday, tracking problems and whatnot. Now that we have a 4 head, Timesavers HQ occasionally likes to showcase it and preview for other people that want something similar.

  11. #11
    what's your feed rate? I can't remember for sure, but I think we're running most everything at 21.7 fpm. I don't honestly know if that's an optimal speed, I'm happy with the results though.

  12. #12
    I’d say the widebelt is roughly the same as that, and the orbital is probably 15 fpm

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