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I put it together, added the optional tables, made the adjustments and was up and running before noon.Others have written extensively about this sander, but many of their reviews are over a year old. That means less ripping of wide boards to fit the planer and then reglueing them up to get the width of board I need. Also, I like the idea of being able to flatten wide boards that won't fit through my planer. I don't see why others have had such a hard time using this sander. Maybe Jet listened because I had none of their problems and found that adjusting it was easier than setting up and adjusting my jointer.It is so much quieter and easier to use than my planer , I don't think I'll be using my planer much in the future except for fast removal of large amounts of material on boards under 13" and for pine boards that tend to be pitchy.The main reason I got it was that my planer or any planer produces a lot of tear out on highly figured woods like curly maple. Additionally, I can make use of all those off cuts that are to short to go through my planer.Yes, I can see I'm going to get a lot of use out of this sander. With this, no tear out.
and he has been using it ever day since he has received it. My husband has been wanting a drum sander to help finish off his cutting boards and other items that he makes. and with a larger table he is able to do bigger things. we also just added the feed tables to it so it is even more helpfull to him.Any one that has a wood working shop could use the drum sander to help finish off their boards. it will save a lot of the hand sanding that he has been doing.and when After we had some good craft shows I brought it for him.
It may take a while to get down to the correct thickness necessary but it gives a uniform finish. We bought this when we got a big job building kitchen cabinets out of hickory. Since hickory is such a hard wood the planer just doesn't do the job without biting. He has replaced the belts without any problems and is REALLY pleased with that aspect of the product. My husband loves this drum sander.
If you are only going to use this sander occasionally, stick to you portable belt sander. On the positive side, the motor is powerful enough and well designed. I can change a belt on my Porter Cable in 10-15 seconds. This is very frustrating. This requires an absolute perfectly even gap between the table and the roller or you will see a "step" in the middle of the board. I find this sander a bit hard to use and find myself using my Porter Cable belt sander in most cases instead.
The belts are expensive unless you make your own but that task requires a lot of time. On the Jet it takes me 3-4 minutes. I suppose if I used this sander on a daily basis I would conquer some of these hurdles. I could NEVER succeed in sanding a board wider than 16 inches even though that is the claim (16-32). To do the job right you should change belts to finer grit often and be very patient to take off only a tiny bit of wood at a time or you burn the wood and the belt. It is also difficult to perfectly level the gap between the table bed and the sander roller.
The dust collection is effective (I use a 4" Jet dust collection system). And if you don't do this you will have uneven sanding.
Since the spindles had to end up witing about 1/128th of 1/2" square in order to fit a receiving mortise, the sander had to be dead on. I was taking off 1/64th at 100 and 120 grits, then 1/128th at 150,180,220.I did find the belt alignment a little finicky, even after plenty of break-in. But if you stay on top of it, it's not a major problem. But I could gang them with this machine and that worked great.I sanded all the way from 100 grit to 220 grit on this sander (I'll do another quick 220 grit with ROS before installation). That's almost impossible to fully correct with machine adjustment.Anyway, bottom line is no regrets with this machine. That way, when I ended up at 220, I was neither too thin (which would have been really bad.)., nor too thick, which would mean several more passes at 180 or 220 grit to get it down to size (which would have been a lot of wasted effort). However, note that there is understadably a bit of back lash, so I found that if I went slightly lower, then backed it back up to the setpoint, I could mitigate the backlash error. If I was sanding more aggresively, that could have been problematic -- but you're not trying to achieve a less-than-128th accuracy while sanding that aggressively, typically.
Meaning, I had to know to the 128th exactly what my square dimension would be after every grit. I kept feedrate running at least at 60%, and often faster (maybe 80%). I think the machine is probably fine -- I instead predict that the belt itself has a slightly tighter length/circumference on one side. They would have taken forever to do individually with ROS.
I'm not sure that's a real problem if you have a unit that functions properly. I was sanding Cherry. I used this sander to mass-sand ~300 1/2" square, 12"-24" long spindles for a set of Stickley'esque dining chairs. And not just for the final sanding, but all the way through the grits. The good news is that I was able to dial the head into a reliable/repeatable 128th left/right. But it does require more attention than I think should be necessary.
I would occassionally have the red LED light up (which indicates governing of the belt speed) and the belt would indeed slow. No burning at 220. The 1/4 turn of the height adjustment handle worked repeatably, as well. Good luck to you. So that's probably a moot point.I had no issues with throwing any breakers, as some have complained.
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