Thicknesser accuracy

[neilc]

While planning a piece of wood 5" wide I decided to check how level the cutterhead on my DW733 is. There is a difference in thickness of .1mm from side to side. It is uniform from front to back. I actually think its my own fault as I once over tightened on the depth stop .Has anyone tried to adjust the level on the cutterhead or is it worth it in this case. Is it easy or hard to do. Any ideas welcome.
Neil.

 

[CHJ]

While planning a piece of wood 5" wide I decided to check how level the cutterhead on my DW733 is. There is a difference in thickness of .1mm from side to side. It is uniform from front to back. I actually think its my own fault as I once over tightened on the depth stop .Has anyone tried to adjust the level on the cutterhead or is it worth it in this case. Is it easy or hard to do. Any ideas welcome.
Neil.

Is it the cutter head, or has one of the blades slipped out a little one side?

 

[neilc]

I'd say its the cutterhead because only one of the blades would have been affected but I'll check tomorrow.
Neil

 

[WellsWood]

Neil, I had the exact same problem on my machine (same model). I found 2 things that caused it:
Firstly if the blades dull in one place they will not cut quite the same as the sharper section. If thicknessing narrow sections its good practice to use the full width of the cutter by planing subsequent pieces sequentially across the width of the bed. In other words on a 12" bed to thickness 3 peices 4" wide you'd do one on the left, one in the middle, and one on the right to even out the wear on the knives.
Secondly, I have found that once in a while dust will find its way under the steel plate on the bed causing it to tip slightly. you could try removing it and cleaning underneath. A word of warning though, the screws that hold it down are VERY tight! I used spanner on a good fitting hex shank bit (pozi 3 from memory) after giving the bit a sharp tap with a hammer to loosen things up. Mind the back of your hand on the blades when working under there!

Hope this helps.
Mark

 

[Scrit]

I'd say its the cutterhead because only one of the blades would have been affected....

The nature of cutterheads is such that one blade will always have a minute amount of "lead" over the other one. I'd tend to check the bedding of the blades in the slot first before going elsewhere.

Scrit

 

[ike]

There is a difference in thickness of .1mm from side to side.

Out of curiosity Neil, what are you making that requires an accuracy of less than 0.1mm over 125mm width?

Surely a 10 second lick with a piece of sandpaper will lose that much?

Ike

 

[CHJ]

I'd say its the cutterhead because only one of the blades would have been affected but I'll check tomorrow.
Neil

Neil, One mis-aligned blade is all that is needed, the finished profile will always be that of the most proud blade, as Scrit indicated it would be unusual if you managed to set a block of blades up so that they were all scribing exactly the same diameter. Even blades ground to a cylinder in situ rarely run precisely true in practice when fitted on a spinning arbor.

I think Mark may have hit it with blade dulling, do you have a slipstone sharpener you can touch the blades up with in situ?

 

[Steve Maskery]

I'm with Ike on this. 0.1mm is only the thickness of a hair. I wish I could get my thicknesser to cut that consistently. Leave well alone, I would say, and be thankful!

Cheers
Steve

 

[neilc]

Thanks for the replys lads. I'll have a look at the blades as suggested and maybe leave it at that. While I wasn't too concerned about 0.1mm as it isn't much over 5" but I presumed it would be double that over the full capacity of the machine.
Neil

 

[Steve Maskery]

I presumed it would be double that over the full capacity of the machine.

Maybe, maybe not, maybe more. It depends on how straight the blades are set and how flat your table is.

And probably whether there is an R in the month.

Cheers
Steve

 

[Scrit]

.... I wasn't too concerned about 0.1mm as it isn't much over 5" but I presumed it would be double that over the full capacity of the machine.

Not necessarily, it could just be ginnding tolerance on the cutter

Scrit

 

[Anonymous]

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