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4) The machine leaves small sipes (not from the in-feed roller) on the surface of the board. Adjusting the rollers is fairly straight forward with a straight edge and machinists thickness guage set, but to access the cam locking set screw, you have to lower the table and when you raise it again, hope you have gotten it back to the same thickness setting. 3) The table rollers, which per the manual, are supposed to be adjusted to.003" above the table surface, do not stay at that height. On the plus side, the Model 209 does have enough horsepower.I also own a 13" JET planer/molder. Powermatic Tech support tells me that the rollers are to be adjusted to.003" for rough material and even with the table for finished lumber. This machine has been frustrating to operate and a disappointment overall.
This means you have to shut the thing down, lower the table and pull the piece out, start the machine and select the speed, re-adjust the thickness and hope you have the thickness back exactly where it was. I have had to adjust at least one of the rollers every 500 linear feet of material. 1) I've only had it for a year and already both the ON and OFF switches have broken - they are made of plastic. This has proven not to be the case, it will not feed itself if the rollers are not set at a minimum of.003" for rough or finished material. Out of the box this machine worked flawlessy and for years it has produced a mirror finish every time.I would not purchase the Powermatic Model 209 again. 2) The transmittion that changes the feed roller speed slips into neutral.
They are adjusted with a cam mechanism which can not effectively be locked in place.
I also like the solid cast wings, though some reviewers apparently had rust issues. Seriously, half. I rotated all 120+ knives in half an hour (including disconnecting the dust collection and removing the upper cover) just to see how long it would take. The Byrd cutterhead reduces the noise by half.
the noise reduction is unbelievable. It was easy to get this #800 monster off the pallet and into place. The 28 amp motor is serious power, and the nature of helical cutterheads requires less power to cut the same amount of wood (smaller area of contact at a time). Even dense exotic wood poses no problems for this machine. I am writing this review to tell you not to buy this planer without getting the helical carbide Byrd cutterhead. Apparently Amazon doesn't sell it with this option, but do not let that sway your decision. It also produces a vastly superior planed surface. You'll never have to shut down production to have you knives sharpened.
You can even plane end grain without worry (like a butcher block). It does piss me off that I can't get the digital thickness gauge that comes on the 15" planer. It is all I've ever wanted in a planer. The integrated wheels are a very nice touch, although mine sits in one place. No more clogging of the dust collection by long, stringy maple. It will probably come out next year and all the people who took the risk with this new design get screwed.
This is a fine machine, and plenty powerful. Normally you should only have to rotate 2 or 3 if they get nicked by something other than wood. No tearout even on curly maple (you do have to take light passes though ;). Even while you are planing. Just fast, quiet production of near perfect lumber.
This tool has lived up to every expectation. It was very easy to do. I would suggest using the e-mail support for any warranty claims as the phone line seems to be very busy. It was in good adjustment.
I don't think I would recommend this machine if you are looking for a "finish planer" if one exists. I haven't adusted or replaced the knives yet. The dust collection hood isn't set up for flex hose but just add a ridgid 45 and it works great. This machine is made for making rough sawn lumber smooth not making planed lumber smoother. The motor is very strong I haven't had it bog down with anything including quartersawn oak. The powermatic tech support is great.
If you can afford it definetly go for the shelix cutterhead. The only thing I would add is to make the cast iron wings collapsable so it could take up less room when not in use, but then I wouldn't need to buy a bigger shop. The planer arrived in perfect condition in a very sturdy crate. I have made some minor adjustments to the bed rollers.
Thanks. Every thing went great, the delivery was very fast. The machine works great.
Powermatic used to offer this head with a few select machines. Extremely quiet, vertually no tear out or chatter. We have had the same knives in the planer for almost 6 months and have yet to change or adjust them.
We consider this fairly normal however. Unfortunately, our several hours of labor required to fix the unit were not covered. After reading a few reviews here, I can understand some of the dissapointments.We received our planer in good condition and did need to fine tune some of the settings.
Not a big surprise though.If you are a serious woodworker or have a medium or larger shop, I would highly recommend replacing the cutter head with the one offered by Byrd Tool as we did.The results were more than like night and day. We will use this new head design on all our joiners and planers. The one problem we experienced out the gate though was that a chip deflector broke from it's weld and fell into the knife head.
Since we purchase this unit from a large dealership, Powermatic shipped all the needed replacement parts immediately.
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