Power Feeder Tires

[Ben Abate]

Hello all and Happy Thanksgiving

I have a quick question before I am called to carve up the Turkey. I'll take it to the shop and do a good job on the band saw.

MY questions is about tires for a power feeder. I believe I need new tires on mine. I purchased this one used but in great condition but it seems to slip when feeding wood thru the jointer. I have it mounted on my 20 inch jointer and I found that I have to assist it at some point everytime I joint boards. Assuming that I have the proper pressure on the board I can only think that is why the tires aren't gripping and letting the wood slip. Would you guys agree????

If this is and I think it is the problem who would be a good company to send the wheels to, to get recovered and are there different materials that are used? By the way is it very expensive to recover the wheels??? The reason I ask is I have other power feeders and thought if the turn around isn't too long I'll send all of them at once.

Regards
Ben

[Steve Rowe]

Hello all and Happy Thanksgiving

I have a quick question before I am called to carve up the Turkey. I'll take it to the shop and do a good job on the band saw.

MY questions is about tires for a power feeder. I believe I need new tires on mine. I purchased this one used but in great condition but it seems to slip when feeding wood thru the jointer. I have it mounted on my 20 inch jointer and I found that I have to assist it at some point everytime I joint boards. Assuming that I have the proper pressure on the board I can only think that is why the tires aren't gripping and letting the wood slip. Would you guys agree????

If this is and I think it is the problem who would be a good company to send the wheels to, to get recovered and are there different materials that are used? By the way is it very expensive to recover the wheels??? The reason I ask is I have other power feeders and thought if the turn around isn't too long I'll send all of them at once.

Regards
Ben

Ben - I can't resist. After resawing your turkey, you should never feed it through the jointer using a power feeder. Just way too much juice and gease. If you would stop using a power feeder on your turkeys you wouldn't have those slippage problems.

On a more serious note, at the IWF last year I met the folks at Axiom Industries who both manufacture and recoat power feed rollers at what I thought was a very reasonable cost. I haven't used their services yet but I will when the time comes. I will likely just purchase a set of rollers from them with the replaceable tires. They are located in Oregon and their number is 503-620-2439.
Steve

[Ben Abate]

Steve,
Thanks for the info, I will do a search and see if I can find them. If not I'll give them a call.

You got to admit that putting that turkey through the machines saves me from doing the periodic servicing.

Thanks again
Ben

[Mike Heidrick]

I have seen some jointer feeders that did not have wheels but a segmented conveyor belt of some kind. I believe that the belt may have had spikes/teeth as well. Anyone else see a jointer feeder like this?

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Maybe a good cleaning will do the job.

[Ben Abate]

Hi fellas,
It's the tires!!!! I took three wheels off of my other 4 wheel Stef Maggi that is about a year old to see if it made a difference and it did. I fed about 120 LF of 12" wide cherry through there and not one of the boards had any problems. I'll start with Steve's suggestion on Monday and go from there. I think I'll just get all of my feeder's wheels recovered. From my experience with natural rubber for rollers in bigger planers it seems over time they get hard and loose their ability to grip. I once rebuilt a 15 inch Makita Planer that had natural rubber feed rollers, when I took it apart the roller or pressure rollers were sticky and Guooy. On another one the rollers were hard as a rock. I think the newer material is some type of nylon or man made material that holds up better over time.

thanks for all of your help. I'll start looking on Mon.

Ben

[Joe Dusel (Vista, CA)]

Most of these feeder wheels seem to have the same basic configuration. I've got a Delta feeder (Taiwanese) which seems to be very similar to the European feeders, and the same as every other feeder coming out of Asia. I replaced my wheels/tires with some with replaceable tires from Grizzly. The were not very expensive, and seem like a decent product. They work well.

Joe

[Rick Lizek]

I have seen some jointer feeders that did not have wheels but a segmented conveyor belt of some kind. I believe that the belt may have had spikes/teeth as well. Anyone else see a jointer feeder like this?

www.westernroller.com sells feeder wheels and the belted style. Several different durometer wheels are available for different grip qualities.

[Ben Abate]

Rick,

Thanks, I briefly checked out their site. I'll give it a better look possibly tomorrow.

Ben

[Bernhard Lampert]

Ben,

How are you? we met a long time ago at a Felder open house.

Back to the powerfeeder tires:
Fletcher Machinery in Lexington, NC (1-800-438-1054) are recovering wheels.
I am having mine recovered with their proprietary yellow urethane, saw it at the Greensboro show. As compared to the original Felder wheels, the material is somewhat softer, but no comparison about friction. I like the softer whmaterial better. I am paying about $20/wheel + shipping.
They also have an exchange program in case you do not want to be w/o PF. They will ship the wheels and you will return your 'old' wheels.
Cheers,
Bernhard

[Ben Abate]

Bernhard,

Very nice to hear from you, I do remember us meeting. If I remember correctly you were from that area were you not? (NC)

I received a quote this morning from Fletcher for $23.00 per wheel. That sounds about what you were saying. I'm going to see if any of the companies that I contacted yesterday reply, if not I'll call Fletchers and find out about the exchange program. I originally asked about the Tan Neoprene with a durometer of 40. I'll ask about the yellow's composition.

I think the last time we met you were running for a plane, but you first stopped long enough to drop a couple of dollars on some Felder Equipment if my memory serves me correctly.

I don't know if they are having any more open houses. It seems like they are focusing on the new show room in Chicago. Last year they canceled one because of lack of interest or maybe it was lack of interest with the program and instructor they had lined up. I think it was Mark Dugsinski, (butchered that spelling).

Well, thanks for the info and I'll let you know what direction I take.

I hope to run into you sometime soon.

Take care
Ben


Bernhard,
I am sending the hubs off today to Fletchers to get recovered. They seemed like nice guys to talk to and they seemed to have the product that would work for me. As I said earlier their price was also pretty good. Pacific Roller who were also very good about expaining their product wanted $42.70 per wheel. Fletchers was $23.10 per wheel. I sent 3 of them and have 4 more to recover so $20.00 bucks a wheel adds up on 7 wheels. I went with the Durometer 40 Tan. The Yellow poly was a different Durometer, something like 70 and I thought that was too hard of a compound for me.
They told me that these will be soft but they will really grip. If I were running a production shop it maybe different.

Take care, I wanted to keep you up on what I was doing. Thanks for the tip.

Ben