Monster power feeder
Posted: 05 Aug 2018, 06:56
Given that I'm going to be running loads of mouldings etc I decided to get a power feeder. The new Co-matic is a lovely bit of kit but a bit out of my price range especially as I wanted to use the power feeder on the planer and table saw as well as the spindle moulder.
After much deliberation, I decided on a Maggi Steff with a humungous 1030mm arm. In theory, you swing it out of the way when you want to cut sheet stuff, wide boards on the table saw. Yeah, as if. This thing weights a ton.
When it arrived I discovered it was three-phase ( a little bit of information missing from the listing!) but luckily for me not a problem.
I wound it out to the table saw and then discovered a fundamental flaw in my plan. It's just too damn heavy for the wee Hammer tilt-table support which flexes due to leverage at the end of that long arm. That flexing then throws the feeder vertical support out which throws out the angle of the rollers and the available adjustment axes on the feeder are more limited than my old feeder sadly. A couple of Heath Robinson solutions would be either a ratchet strap pulling the support back to the vertical or a bit of timber wedged underneath the arm on the feeder side to lift it back 'true'.
An academic exercise though as thinking it through a bit more I've come to the conclusion that using a power feeder on a table saw could be a bad idea. Seems to me that if you are ripping down a large sawn 9 x2 length of timber then the table saw is the one machine where you need to listen to the sound of the cut and adjust the feed rate accordingly. The last thing you need is a power feeder trying to ram a board through when it's starting to bind against the riving knife due to tensions being released due to the cut.
Looking forward to using it on the planer though.
After much deliberation, I decided on a Maggi Steff with a humungous 1030mm arm. In theory, you swing it out of the way when you want to cut sheet stuff, wide boards on the table saw. Yeah, as if. This thing weights a ton.
When it arrived I discovered it was three-phase ( a little bit of information missing from the listing!) but luckily for me not a problem.
I wound it out to the table saw and then discovered a fundamental flaw in my plan. It's just too damn heavy for the wee Hammer tilt-table support which flexes due to leverage at the end of that long arm. That flexing then throws the feeder vertical support out which throws out the angle of the rollers and the available adjustment axes on the feeder are more limited than my old feeder sadly. A couple of Heath Robinson solutions would be either a ratchet strap pulling the support back to the vertical or a bit of timber wedged underneath the arm on the feeder side to lift it back 'true'.
An academic exercise though as thinking it through a bit more I've come to the conclusion that using a power feeder on a table saw could be a bad idea. Seems to me that if you are ripping down a large sawn 9 x2 length of timber then the table saw is the one machine where you need to listen to the sound of the cut and adjust the feed rate accordingly. The last thing you need is a power feeder trying to ram a board through when it's starting to bind against the riving knife due to tensions being released due to the cut.
Looking forward to using it on the planer though.