15″ Helical Planer with Dust Collection problem
I’ve recently picked up a new 15″ helical planer from Craftex. I’ve got it hooked up to a 2hp 1790cfm dust collector which sits directly beside it with maybe 3′ of 4″ hose connecting the two, with no blast gates or sharp bends. The joints are clamped and taped to avoid leakage. The chip deflector on the planer is within 1/16″ of the cutterhead. There is a fairly substantial amount of chips left on the board as it exits the planer, and as a result the outfeed roller is embedding them into the surface of the board. Has anyone faced this issue, and how did you solve it?
The feed speed doesn’t seem to make any difference. Lighter passes helps a bit, but I am still left with more chips on the outfeed than I should.
**UPDATE: It was totally the foam strip stuck to the underside of the top cover plate, as GeeDubBee suggested.
Replies
Although I'm not familiar with that planer, I'll mention that some machines create a problem for dust extractors because their internal arrangement down which the dust or chips must go to the machine's extraction point slow the air flow. They're too narrow, in some way.
If the internal chute, pipe or other passageway from the dust/chip producing location in the machine to it's output port for the extractor is in some way too restricted, the air can't flow fast enough to pick up all the dust/chips, no matter how powerful the sucker in the extractor. As a result, some dust/chips remain whirling about in the machine's innards, perhaps ending up inhibiting the machine's operation, as you describe.
In addition, the stuff that is sucked out might not be able to rise up far enough in any extractor hose that goes up to the top of the machine, blocking the hose eventually.
My router table extraction to a 3HP extractor down a 4" diameter pipe had this problem. The dust and chips had to be sucked through a 1.5" hole from the router's dust shroud to the 4" pipe via an adapter. The extractor couldn't get enough air flow through the 1.5" dust shroud port so the chips ended up at the lowest part of the pipe, eventually blocking it.
The solution was to add a second pipe via a Y joint, with another dust sucking arrangement on top of the router table. That allowed plenty of air to flow (and collected more of the router's chip production) so all the chips, including the chips from the router shroud, could make it up the 4" pipe to the extractor fan and hopper.
Lataxe
You didn't mention if you had a cyclone separator. The chips produced by spiral heads are smaller than chips produced by knives, so if you're not using a cyclone separator, it's possible your DC system is losing suction due to clogged filtration.
If I'm not paying attention and let my chip bin fill up, my filter get clogged very quickly and I end up with exactly the situation you described.
I took a quick look & the configuration reminds me of an old delta lunchbox I had. The dust collection on the machine looks like an afterthought, narrower than the cutterhead and too far away. I found that the chips not being collected were coming from the outer edges of the boards (I stained a board in colored stripes and looked at the uncollected chips). I built a new shroud with two suck ports at the outside edges and it was better. My current 12" helical's dust shroud is wider than and all but surrounds the cutter head, with almost perfect capture.
I am not familiar with the Craftex but, my Grizzly G0453X required a slight mod to improve chip collection. I had read about this fix in the forum for quite awhile before I bought the planer. I had all but forgotten about it till your post.
There is a strip of foam the length of the cutter head affixed to the underside of the cover plate. It appears that this foam is to improve chip collection but, alas it does the opposite. I pulled it off. Now there is no more spoil on the board.
If you think about it you have probably read about a number of real-world fixes for factory designs that improve the tool in actual use. This was one for the 15" floor standing planer clone. Powermatic, Jet, Grizzly and others have made this same design for many years. The Craftex may be a cousin.
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It was totally the foam strip stuck to the underside of the top cover plate, as GeeDubBee suggested - Thank you!
Yay! It always feels good to give something back to the community here. Glad it worked for you.
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