Planar Helical Cutterhead Leaving Heavy Scallops
lauriamc
| Posted in General Discussion on
I purchased a Grizzly helical Cutterhead for my DeWalt 735 planer, see below link. Installation and setup were relatively easy. Fast forward 4 months, after running a fair amount of different hardwoods through the planer I am noticing a heavy scallop pattern across workpieces. Could the cutter heads be loosening?
Cutterhead: https://www.grizzly.com/products/grizzly-spiral-cutterhead-for-13-dewalt-planer/t32591
Replies
Maybe it’s time to rotate the carbides.
Maybe. The surface coming out is very smooth and the machine operates fine. I don’t think it’s the carbide blades.
“[Deleted]”
The cuts look pretty clean. The scallops are pretty excessive. I would try shallower cuts. The DW 735 is the de facto standard for lunchbox planers. I have one. It is still a job site tool and pretty lightweight when it comes to a planer that will run an insert head. It is not unreasonable to think that the frame is flexing under too deep of a cut.
I know a lot of people switch to insert heads on these machines. The joy of the swap is generally followed several months later with machine failure or other problems. Obviously the ship has sailed but (for others that may read this later) I do not know how workable this solution is long term.
The rubber feed rollers may be your friend on this. If lighter passes don't resolve the problem you can run the board again at a different angle to possibly clean things up(?).
I’m going to try lighter passes. I also noticed that the preset thickness gauge is off by about 1/32” since I swapped cutterheads. Once thing I also noticed is the Grizzly cutter head is sold as a “spiral” whereas the Bryd is a true helical. My understanding is that the difference is in the cutters overlapping each other which might cancel out the scallops I’m seeing.
I am going to use a No. 3 with a super shallow cut to knock off the high points. See what happens
This YouTube video talks about scalloping:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRvwtZQM8kk
Also, I read somewhere that there are 2 different diameters of aftermarket cutter heads sold for the DeWalt. One is exactly the same diameter as the original (straight knife) one and requires you to remove *every* carbide insert to allow it to fit through the hole in the frame during install. With this one the depth gauge still reads correctly.
I'm guessing you bought the smaller diameter cutter head that's easier to install.
Mike
Mike, the two you are referring to are the Bride Shelix cutters. Not the Grizzly. Although I did not have to remove cutter heads to install so so you might be right. Not are that would cause the scalloping, but would account for the difference I am seeing between the thickness preset gauge and the actual thickness.
Yes, agreed.
The video I linked to is about the scalloping problem. It's unrelated to the depth gauge issue.
Mike
Reach out to Bird. They are your best resource for solving this issue. I had a similar issue and they replaced the unit. The replacement doesn't have any issues. The scalloping issue was more with softer woods (Cypress, Pine, etc.) than harder woods. Probably a result of taking finer cuts with hard wood. However, with shadow light the scallop was still present on harder wood like maple, etc. Good luck. Bird is great to deal with and they will work directly with you regardless of where you purchased the unit. 855-567-3250. It's family owned and operated.