|
|
|
Planers
Planers fall under the category of standard machines; however, there are some quite sophisticated planers used for volume production. Planers for small shops are normally quite small with low horsepower and normally just plane from the bottom to get the wood down to the required size, similar to what we saw under Abrasive Planers. Abrasive planers have belts while these planers have knife cutters, which are attached into a round circular cutting block normally having four to six knives per block. These have to be sharpened on a regular basis to make the machine perform properly; therefore, many planers have grinders attached to them so that the knives can be ground directly on the machine without having to remove them or send them for sharpening.
Planers are predominantly used in the solid wood industry. If operators are planing down many narrow pieces at a time, it is advisable that the feeding mechanism has what is called sectional feed. A sectional feed mechanism has small independently operated sections that push the pieces of wood through the machine. This allows an operator to put a three inch thick and a three-and-one-half inch thick piece of wood through the machine at the same time without worrying that the thinner or thicker piece will not feed, or possibly get stuck. If these were non-sectional feed, either one piece would stop the machine or the other would not feed while the thicker piece was going through.
Some planers are two sided which cut from the top and bottom at the same time. Companies that have single planers and want to plane both sides of the material to get it down to a pre-required thickness would have to feed the piece through the machine twice. Most machines will open up to 8-12" in height and horsepower's can vary anywhere from 5 to 7-1/2 HP for the small shop to 18-50 HP on some of the larger units.
Planers can also be four sided, which will plane the top, bottom and two sides all at the same time. Some planers can have multiple rip saws attached to them at the outfeed end so that the piece can be planed and ripped into smaller pieces all in one operation. Some cutters that are used on the more expensive machines are called helical heads, which are circular, spiral cutting heads that are very expensive. These helical heads are very quiet as opposed to the standard cutters that are noisy.
Most planers will feed the material at between 25' per minute to 300' per minute on the larger units. Companies that produce 2"x4" or 2"x6" lumber (known as "Re-man" operations), can have planers that will feed up to 2,000' per minute.
A relatively new innovation in the planer category is a sander/planer combination machine. This machine will normally look like a conventional sander but the first head will be a helical planning head followed by one, two or three wide belt sanding belts all fed through the machine by a conventional sander feed mat.
MANUFACTURERS OF THESE MACHINES INCLUDE:
Activa, Boss, Bridgewood, Buss, Cantek, Casolin, Delta, General, Griggio, Grizzly, Holytek, Marunaka, Northfield , Oliver, Porter, Powermatic, Robinson, Scm, Scmi, Sicar, Steton, Toolex, Viel, Wadkin, Whitney, Yates, Yates American, Cantek, Extrema, Kupfermuhle, Pinheiro, Shoda, Toss, Woods, Ramco, Robland, Felder, Timesavers, Sicar, Steton.
Copyright © MLS MACHINERY INC. 2008 All rights reserved.
|
|
|
|
|
