rtyuiop
26th October 2015, 10:43 AM
Hi all,
So a few weeks ago I acquired a woodman combo machine from the good folks at gregory machinery - this unit:
http://www.gregmach.com/product/woodman-combo-thicknesser-jointer-hh/
There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of information on the net about this machine, so thought I'd write some of my experience up... I've only had a few weekends mucking about with it do far, so call this a preliminary review. In general I really love this unit - nitpicks follow, but none of them are serious.
Setup was easy, as the unit came pretty much fully assembled, just had to get the fence and guard assembled IIRC. Having said that, the instructions aren't great, and I do actually have a couple of hand levers left that I couldn't find a place for. Only problem I really ran into was that it's not the easiest thing to get off the pallet by yourself! I also failed to notice that the outfeed roller was wrapped in plastic until the plastic started to shred after a few uses and the thicknesser stopped feeding properly, but that was my own stupid fault.
One weird thing - it comes with a 10A plug, but seems to draw more than 10A (before I got a sparky in to add a 15A socket, I tried running it off a 10A power board - nothing else on the circuit - and it tripped the cheapo protector on the board). I was expecting it to be 15A, and it seems to be, just weird that it's not a 15A plug.
The height winder and table for the thicknesser work nicely, but the lock for the height feels a little sloppy... I haven't noticed the table move at all when it's locked, so I'm hoping it's just cosmetic. The only times I've noticed snipe I suspect I may have failed to lock the height, so it seems like it does the job.
Dust collection is OK, but it sure would be nice if it came with a 6" port (although it's far from the only machine with this issue). With the conversion from jointer to planer mode, the dust port is in very different location in each mode, so getting dust extraction running to it without a long length of flexi (which kills air flow) is a pain. My current dust set up is sub-optimal, but it's still clearing chips pretty well - I'm just not confident it's picking up fine dust.
My long term plan is to run separate connections from my dust trunk to minimise the flexi involved. That will mean significant extra pain disconnecting and reconnecting the dust hose when changing modes... But to be fair, I can't think of a good way that could be improved.
Enough with the nitpicks - the highlights of this unit:
Most importantly, the finish coming off the spiral head has to be seen to be believed. Particularly on anything other than consistent, straight grain, it's simply amazing. If you're taking shallow cuts, it almost seems like it doesn't matter if you're feeding with/against/across the grain. I do a reasonable amount of gluing up laminated turning blanks, and often don't pay as much attention as I should to grain direction, so this is great!
I haven't fed it anything really difficult as yet, but so far power doesn't seem to be an issue. It didn't even blink at taking a decent cut off a piece of quite hard bloodwood that was maybe 20cm across.
I haven't used it for anything super critical in jointer mode so far, but from what little I have done, the tables came out of the box very close to co-planar, and haven't moved. I'll update it if I run into problems in that area.
The other really nice part is the noise, or lack thereof... I almost think the motor is almost silent and all you can hear is the cutter head acting as a tiny, very expensive fan. Only thing that's slightly worrying is that when the dusty is running, I suspect it might be possible to not notice the machine is on as well.
I'll update if I notice anything new!
Cheers,
Danny
So a few weeks ago I acquired a woodman combo machine from the good folks at gregory machinery - this unit:
http://www.gregmach.com/product/woodman-combo-thicknesser-jointer-hh/
There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of information on the net about this machine, so thought I'd write some of my experience up... I've only had a few weekends mucking about with it do far, so call this a preliminary review. In general I really love this unit - nitpicks follow, but none of them are serious.
Setup was easy, as the unit came pretty much fully assembled, just had to get the fence and guard assembled IIRC. Having said that, the instructions aren't great, and I do actually have a couple of hand levers left that I couldn't find a place for. Only problem I really ran into was that it's not the easiest thing to get off the pallet by yourself! I also failed to notice that the outfeed roller was wrapped in plastic until the plastic started to shred after a few uses and the thicknesser stopped feeding properly, but that was my own stupid fault.
One weird thing - it comes with a 10A plug, but seems to draw more than 10A (before I got a sparky in to add a 15A socket, I tried running it off a 10A power board - nothing else on the circuit - and it tripped the cheapo protector on the board). I was expecting it to be 15A, and it seems to be, just weird that it's not a 15A plug.
The height winder and table for the thicknesser work nicely, but the lock for the height feels a little sloppy... I haven't noticed the table move at all when it's locked, so I'm hoping it's just cosmetic. The only times I've noticed snipe I suspect I may have failed to lock the height, so it seems like it does the job.
Dust collection is OK, but it sure would be nice if it came with a 6" port (although it's far from the only machine with this issue). With the conversion from jointer to planer mode, the dust port is in very different location in each mode, so getting dust extraction running to it without a long length of flexi (which kills air flow) is a pain. My current dust set up is sub-optimal, but it's still clearing chips pretty well - I'm just not confident it's picking up fine dust.
My long term plan is to run separate connections from my dust trunk to minimise the flexi involved. That will mean significant extra pain disconnecting and reconnecting the dust hose when changing modes... But to be fair, I can't think of a good way that could be improved.
Enough with the nitpicks - the highlights of this unit:
Most importantly, the finish coming off the spiral head has to be seen to be believed. Particularly on anything other than consistent, straight grain, it's simply amazing. If you're taking shallow cuts, it almost seems like it doesn't matter if you're feeding with/against/across the grain. I do a reasonable amount of gluing up laminated turning blanks, and often don't pay as much attention as I should to grain direction, so this is great!
I haven't fed it anything really difficult as yet, but so far power doesn't seem to be an issue. It didn't even blink at taking a decent cut off a piece of quite hard bloodwood that was maybe 20cm across.
I haven't used it for anything super critical in jointer mode so far, but from what little I have done, the tables came out of the box very close to co-planar, and haven't moved. I'll update it if I run into problems in that area.
The other really nice part is the noise, or lack thereof... I almost think the motor is almost silent and all you can hear is the cutter head acting as a tiny, very expensive fan. Only thing that's slightly worrying is that when the dusty is running, I suspect it might be possible to not notice the machine is on as well.
I'll update if I notice anything new!
Cheers,
Danny