Hi all, here's a little tale of woe that hopefully one of you illustrious and more experienced woodies out there can help me with.
Since Wed last I have been the proud owner of a brand spanking new Jet JPT planer thicknesser (insert envious snorts here) purchased from APTC for the not inconsequential sum of £1,349. However (you just knew that was coming), all is not well in Welling.
After drinking in the impressive sight of the HUGE packing crate for some time my big mate Simon and I set to with with numerous planks, beams, chocks, steel bars, scaffolding poles etc. Several hours and more then one heart stopping moment later we finally persuaded the beast safely from it's perch on a 5" pallet to the workshop floor, and thence onto the mobile base. Furious, but careful, work ensued with rags and solvent to get it cleaned down ready for action.
Now all I needed to do was fit sharp knives (the ones that came fitted looked like they'd been ground on a concrete doorstep!), check everything for squareness, plug in to my dedicated 16amp circuit, and get stuck in.
Problem was, when I put my engineers square up to it to square it to the table, I could clearly see it was only touching the face of the fence at the top and bottom edges. On closer examination with feeler gauges I measured a .35mm gap between the midpoint of the fence and the blade of the square. Of course I contacted Axminster who immediately agreed to replace the fence, along with one of the support brackets that was also duff.
Well, the replacements arrived this morning. In fact what I was sent was a more or less complete fence assembly including all the support arms and brackets, that had been removed wholesale from a machine in store. Although a bit grubby and clearly secondhand, the brackets look fine at least within what one can reasonably expect from pressed steel items with no machined faces to slide on. The replacement fence extrusion though is another matter, and is every bit as dished between top and bottom edges as the first, if not worse (this time I got a .4mm feeler gauge in the gap).
Once again on to technical at Axminster who went to their resident Jet engineer. His opinion is, in a nutshell, this:
1. He could not guaranty in any way to EVER find one that was bang on flat, if he could he'd have one for his own machine. The machines were made to a price and some sacrifice in quality more or less has to be expected.
2. I could make a hardwood facing, of Oak for example, and attach to or replace the existing fence extrusion.
I have to say that, despite my best efforts to remain philosophical about all this, I am less than inspired by either of these comments considering how much I paid for this supposedly "industrial" rated machine. I have long held to the beliefs that "you get what you pay for" and "cheap tools cost more in the long run" and therefore my question is this:
At what point does a tool cease to be "cheap", and more specifically, what is a reasonable expectation of accuracy in the manufacture of a machine at this level?
Axminsters technical chap, incidentally, suggested a fix; he would uplift the machine and sell me a comparable Rojek or Sedgwick model instead, with a bit of discount as a sweetener. I know he's only trying to help, but when you've parted with this kind of money on machine you don't really need to be told you haven't spent enough for it to do what it was designed to do.
I can't tell you how much I looked forward to getting the Jet, and I'm still confident (just) that I can get it to be the machine I thought I'd bought. But at the moment I'm a bit too despondent about it to think objectively, so I would welcome any and all comments and opinions.
Thank you
Mark[/b]
Since Wed last I have been the proud owner of a brand spanking new Jet JPT planer thicknesser (insert envious snorts here) purchased from APTC for the not inconsequential sum of £1,349. However (you just knew that was coming), all is not well in Welling.
After drinking in the impressive sight of the HUGE packing crate for some time my big mate Simon and I set to with with numerous planks, beams, chocks, steel bars, scaffolding poles etc. Several hours and more then one heart stopping moment later we finally persuaded the beast safely from it's perch on a 5" pallet to the workshop floor, and thence onto the mobile base. Furious, but careful, work ensued with rags and solvent to get it cleaned down ready for action.
Now all I needed to do was fit sharp knives (the ones that came fitted looked like they'd been ground on a concrete doorstep!), check everything for squareness, plug in to my dedicated 16amp circuit, and get stuck in.
Problem was, when I put my engineers square up to it to square it to the table, I could clearly see it was only touching the face of the fence at the top and bottom edges. On closer examination with feeler gauges I measured a .35mm gap between the midpoint of the fence and the blade of the square. Of course I contacted Axminster who immediately agreed to replace the fence, along with one of the support brackets that was also duff.
Well, the replacements arrived this morning. In fact what I was sent was a more or less complete fence assembly including all the support arms and brackets, that had been removed wholesale from a machine in store. Although a bit grubby and clearly secondhand, the brackets look fine at least within what one can reasonably expect from pressed steel items with no machined faces to slide on. The replacement fence extrusion though is another matter, and is every bit as dished between top and bottom edges as the first, if not worse (this time I got a .4mm feeler gauge in the gap).
Once again on to technical at Axminster who went to their resident Jet engineer. His opinion is, in a nutshell, this:
1. He could not guaranty in any way to EVER find one that was bang on flat, if he could he'd have one for his own machine. The machines were made to a price and some sacrifice in quality more or less has to be expected.
2. I could make a hardwood facing, of Oak for example, and attach to or replace the existing fence extrusion.
I have to say that, despite my best efforts to remain philosophical about all this, I am less than inspired by either of these comments considering how much I paid for this supposedly "industrial" rated machine. I have long held to the beliefs that "you get what you pay for" and "cheap tools cost more in the long run" and therefore my question is this:
At what point does a tool cease to be "cheap", and more specifically, what is a reasonable expectation of accuracy in the manufacture of a machine at this level?
Axminsters technical chap, incidentally, suggested a fix; he would uplift the machine and sell me a comparable Rojek or Sedgwick model instead, with a bit of discount as a sweetener. I know he's only trying to help, but when you've parted with this kind of money on machine you don't really need to be told you haven't spent enough for it to do what it was designed to do.
I can't tell you how much I looked forward to getting the Jet, and I'm still confident (just) that I can get it to be the machine I thought I'd bought. But at the moment I'm a bit too despondent about it to think objectively, so I would welcome any and all comments and opinions.
Thank you
Mark[/b]
