General Thickness Planer Question....

[Sven]

Good Morning,

I am the second owner of a 15" Delta DC-380 planer, and I am attempting to rebuild/align this beast.  It has never really planed a board parallel; maybe off .012" across a 4" wide board.  I had reluctantly lived with this nuisance and just flipped the board on the last pass in an attempt to level-off the width.

Time to bite the bullet and try to make it right.  I have disassembled it, cleaned and installed new bearings.

My question to the all knowing community -

"In your experience, what is the acceptable error/tolerance for you?" 

If you were to plane a 6" wide board to 0.750" thickness, would you be satisfied if one side was 0.750" and the other was 0.755"?

What's the number you find acceptable?

Thanks for your time,

Sven

 

[polarsea1]

That works out to be .0125 across the full 15" of the planer, IMO way too much. Try to set the knives set within ~.001 across the head. After getting the knives as close as you can, check them for parallelism with the bed, then check the bed rollers to the bed.

If the bed/cutter head is off - you'll need to adjust the table but don't do that until you are satisfied that the cutter head is accurately set. The bed rollers should be adjustable too.

There are some real good resources on the web on how to tune up planers. The best book I've seen is John White's Care and Repair of Shop Machines: A Complete Guide to Setup, Troubleshooting, and Maintenance - it's available on Amazon.

 

[Sven]

That works out to be .0125 across the full 15" of the planer, IMO way too much. Try to set the knives set within ~.001 across the head. After getting the knives as close as you can, check them for parallelism with the bed, then check the bed rollers to the bed.

If the bed/cutter head is off - you'll need to adjust the table but don't do that until you are satisfied that the cutter head is accurately set. The bed rollers should be adjustable too.

There are some real good resources on the web on how to tune up planers. The best book I've seen is John White's Care and Repair of Shop Machines: A Complete Guide to Setup, Troubleshooting, and Maintenance - it's available on Amazon.

Thanks, I'll take a look at that book.  Always room on the bookshelf for another.

You stated that 0.0125" across 15" is excessive.  I completely agree.  But what do you feel is an 'acceptable' figure?  Its nice to have a target in mind as I go through the alignment steps.  I want to be realistic, but at the same time need to be optimistic.

Thanks again,

Sven

 

[polarsea1]

I saw your thread on another forum where you said you'd gotten within .0045 across 10". I'd speculate that is good enough.