Suggestions for Thicknesser

[sirocosm]

I am looking for a thicknesser for my home workshop, at least 10" wide with a spiral cutterhead.

So far I have found the Axminster AT260SPT and the iTech 260S, both a bit above the 1500GBP mark.

Are there any other similar machines available in the UK?

I would not mind buying used, but it looks like that would be unlikely for this type of machine.

 

[Brandlin]

Both of the machines you have listed are combination Planer/Thicknessers. not just Thicknessers.

If you have to have a spiral cutter head then you wot find anything in the cheap bracket as that is still a relatively recent, expensive, rare and high end requirement.

You can find second hand planner thicknessers in many places. But again getting one with a spiral cutter block is less likely.

 

[Trevanion]

Why do you need a helical head? Unless you're dealing with primarily extremely interlocked, rippled and exotic timbers they're kind of an unneeded extra. There are some pluses such as easier set-up, quieter machining, and smaller chips but unless you can't spare 10 minutes to set up knives, have terribly noise-sensitive neighbours, and you're trying to cram as many shavings into the dust collector bag I really don't see why a general user would benefit greatly from them over straight knives for the current price point increase.

I'd probably get a decent second-hand model like a Sedgwick MB or Felder AD731 with a 4-knife block either on Tersa or Felder's knife system for less money and use that for now, if you decide that you need to upgrade to a helical cutter head down the line either you can buy a new machine and sell the old for what you bought it for, or both Sedgwick or Felder could supply you with one to fit your existing (and far better) machine, which by that time hopefully they've come down considerably in price. As soon as you buy one of those new ITech or Axminster planers it will be worth about 3/4 what you paid for it as soon as you pull it out of the box, after a couple of years it will be about half.

 

[sirocosm]

In Canada I bought a lunchbox thicknesser, which didn't really cut it, so I upgraded to a 15" Delta thicknesser. I had an old Rockwell planer (jointer), but I didn't use it much. Changing knives in the thicknesser was a pain, and all too frequent, so I purchased a set of carbide knives for it. It was great. The Delta was much quieter than the small one, probably because of the induction motor, larger diameter cutterhead and carbide knives. I noticed my small one used to really make a racket when the blades got dull.

In Canada my woodshop was in my basement, in my detached house, on my large lot, so noise wasn't really an issue. Here in the UK people are a little bit closer together. I heard the helical heads are much quieter, and the cutters are carbide and look easy to change.

I have thought about getting a used more industrial type machine as they would not be as loud as a small one, and I could always limit my work to reasonable hours. The problem is that they all seem really massive, like 300kg massive. There does not seem to be so much in-between, like the Delta I had (similar to the one below).

 

[sirocosm]

FWIW this 15 inch puppy is around 950GBP and only 200kg. They don't seem to sell this design here.

https://canucktools.ca/king-15-industri ... kc-382cfx/

 

[Yojevol]

FWIW this 15 inch puppy is around 950GBP and only 200kg. They don't seem to sell this design here.

https://canucktools.ca/king-15-industri ... kc-382cfx/

So you are looking for a thicknesser and not a planer/thicknesser (p/t). I've just searched around on ebay and I don't think it's going to be easy on the s/h market.
I was in a similar situation about a year ago and thought that a possible solution was to buy a p/t, which are reasonably plentiful, and remove the planer tables. I was very lucky indeed as a 12" Record p/t came up which was minus its tables. I got it for a song at £205. There was only one other bidder interested and he wasn't prepared to go above the starting price.
Brian

 

[sirocosm]

You are right, I am mostly looking for a thicknesser, and if it happens to have a planer on top, I am sure I would find a use for it sometimes. So I could easily live with one missing parts on top, or a crappy fence, or slow to change over.

I have been looking at the various makes of 260s, Record, Metabo, etc., but they don't seem so robust. There does not seem to be much on the used market between these and a full-on 300+ kg industrial behemoth.

 

[MikeK]

I am looking for a thicknesser for my home workshop, at least 10" wide with a spiral cutterhead.

If you're not interested in a machine with the planer option, have you considered a table-top thicknesser, such as the Axminster AT330 for £540? Axminster also sells a version with the spiral cutter, the AT330ST, for £999.

 

[Myfordman]

Those axi machines have screaming brush motors and so the noise advantage of the spiral cutter will be masked.
I like the US style four post thicknessers like the delta. I was in the process of shipping a used one over from the US when one popped up less than 100 miles away from me. Although it needed work, I snapped it up. It is a DC380, same as the one in the photo above. Built like a brick outhouse and weighs about 250kg!
If you do get a US one, the 60Hz motors fitted will overheat if run on UK 240v mains but there is an easy trick to run them on around 210v 50Hz and they run very happilly.

 

[sirocosm]

And you could update it with one of these:
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzl ... head/H7655

Although it is a bit pricey.

I found the Grizzly version was sold here at some point on Amazon.co.uk, with the spiral cutterhead:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grizzly-G0453Z ... B0017IF2RU

but it says "currently unavailable", so I am not sure what it cost here. Probably not cheap.

 

[Trevanion]

The problem is that they all seem really massive, like 300kg massive. There does not seem to be so much in-between, like the Delta I had (similar to the one below).

More mass is good, it means less vibration and general racket!

I won't link to it directly since it's against the forum rules, but there's a pretty much identical machine on eBay at the moment under "15" Thicknesser". It's just outside of Exeter which may be too far of a trek from Norwich.

You're right though, dedicated thicknessers are usually either "glorified toys that couldn't cut a slab of butter" or "Bigger and more powerful than my car" without much in between. What I've got is a Multico TH 12" thicknesser which is a sort of medium-duty machine but built exceptionally well. I had to rebuild mine since it had been abused for decades but really tidy ones can be picked up for about £400-500 or so.

 

[sirocosm]

That looks like a very nice machine, I could wait for something like that to come up, at ~500 the price is right.

I saw the one you refer to on eBay. I downloaded the pictures and zoomed in a bit, but I could not tell what make it was. I am bit worried if I buy something too obscure, if I need parts for it I will be in trouble. It is also 3 phase, but I could get around that with a phase converter, or change the motor if takes something standard.

 

[The Bear]

Bob,
Whats the trick to run the US motor on UK single phase 240v ? My tablesaw is american but has had the motor swapped out. I've considered importing other stuff but this seems a bit of a pain.
Cheers
Mark

 

[Myfordman]

You wire a low voltage say 36 volt, transformer in anti phase with the uk mains input. The secondary winding current rating must be equal or greater than the running current of the motor.
The resulting voltage will be 36 v lower than the in coming mains voltage.
So if the motor needs 10 amps the transformer only needs to be rated at 360 va or higher. It does not need to handle the full motor power!

 

[The Bear]

Bob
Interesting solution, though probably one for the sparks for me. thanks for explaining
Mark

 

[sirocosm]

Another option I have been thinking about is to look for a DeWalt 1150 (or Elu 1161) used, and get one of these:
http://www.sheartak.com/Sheartak_Spiral ... 1150_Combo

They are around 350GBP, but with shipping and import charges somewhat over 400. For some reason this particular cutterhead is quite a bit cheaper than most other makes available in the UK.

Has anyone ever done this? Is it hard to change the cutterhead? and is the DeWalt 1150/Elu 1161 a decent machine?

 

[Trevanion]

They're an OK machine, nothing particularly special about them and nothing particularly terrible about them, although your cutter head will be worth more than the machine is and I'd have some concerns about how well the machine will perform without bogging down with the cutterhead installed. There's quite a nice ITech 310mm planer with spiral head on eBay at the moment...