Replies

1. 
   john_c2 | Jul 30, 2020 09:35am | #1

   If you have the money and space, look at wide belt sanders. It's much more of a professional machine. The majority are three phase, but some are single. They draw a lot of current, and also need a large compressor. Drum Sanders are much more of an occasional use tool.

   There are dual drum sanders out there, and I have no experience with them. Put 80 grit on the first, 120 on the second, and you work faster. That's the theory.

   There are two basic types of drum sanders . Some are enclosed. If it's an 18 inch width, you can do up to an 18 inch board. The rest are open ended. An 18-36 can do a 36 inch wide board -- do 18 inches on one side, turn it around, and do the other 18.

   I think all drum sanders are fussy, frustrating machines. They are slow. If you try to feed too fast, or take off too much, the paper burns, and you leave black tracks on the board. If you're doing narrow pieces you can work around that spot for a while, or change the paper.

   With open end machines, you always need to adjust them. They'll be too high on one side, too low on the other. It's usually a pain to get them dialed in.

   I have a Jet 16-32. I make hundreds of small pieces as small as 3/8 wide, 7 inches long, .050 thick. No other machine is capable of doing this. So my relationship is one of love/hate.

   If I were doing furniture size parts, I would not use it, at all. If I needed to plane wider stock, I'd get a nice 21 inch planer with a helical head, and do the final surfacing by hand.

2. 
   geedubbee | Jul 30, 2020 10:11am | #2

   John_C2 is on target depending on your space, power and financial resources. The greater abrasive surface area and production design of wide belt machines make them better suited to hours of continuous use.

   I read wailing and moaning about drum sander design issues for years before I got to the point of getting one. This made it easy to pounce on the SuperMax 19-38 shortly after it was announced. The hype turned out to be true.

   I have never had to re-align the machine since initial setup years ago. Paper changes are so quick and easy I routinely change grits when I actually should during sanding operations ;-)

   You will read many well justified hate oriented drum sander threads. The only one I ever found that got consistent praise was the SuperMax. Hopefully that still holds true now that they were sold.

3. 
   user-7063600 | Jul 30, 2020 01:40pm | #3

   If you do woodworking for a living, find a good used wide belt. No drum sander will be even close.
   However if you want a good drum sander, avoid any of the open end machines. They are all junk and will not stay true. They also eat paper.
   I have the dual head grizzly 24" 5HP it is a good machine. I do a fair amount of sanding and only have to change paper every 9 to 12 months. The jet 16-32 i had (and hated) could barely do 5 or 6cabinet doors and needed new paper,
   Wood Master has USA made machines in 3 different widths.

4. 
   mdorsam | Jul 30, 2020 02:45pm | #4

   I too have a love/hate relationship with Drum Sanders; so much so, that I tossed-out the one that I had - it was not worth the shop space. The machine holds-out the promise of doing the last 1/32" of fine leveling and sanding. My experience is that the input feed is under-powered, the cantilever design means that, under-load, it's never parallel to the table, the sanding paper always burns or leaves troughs in the piece, and the paper doesn't last long, because it burns when you take-off more than a whisper. Other than that, you have all of the great marketing hype about how great they are. They are a very good concept, universally poorly executed - everybody is just a variation on a 30 year-old design; some with fancy electronic readouts; 'smart' load-sensing; and 'new' easy to install paper thing-ees.