Can someone please review video to determine who keeps tearing up the surface/drum sander? Went to use last night and the sanding belt was toast. If a person ruins the belt, then at least have the decency and integrity to fess up and log it up for repair. If the offender is unwilling to do that, maybe he/she should be banned! Last week, the belt was damaged but usable. It was obviously changed during the week but is now torn up again! I suspect that it may be the same offender, based on the color of the saw dust and the debris left on the belt?
So while I’m definitely on board with the frustration from quickly dirtied belts from not using the eraser, technically it’s a consumable so banning may be a little on the harsh side, definitely re education but reprimanding seems harsh to me
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Yes Chris, agreed that this is a consumable. However, screwing it up, leaving it unusable for the next person and failing to log it up IS A PROBLEM! Furthermore, this type of damage tends to jack up the horizontal alignment of the drum!
No I absolutely agree, messing them up out of negligence is an issue, but this whole situation here is literally why we exist, to take people who aren’t educated and experienced in a craft and facilitate the education and learning of said craft, so reprimanding them would sever that chain! So yea it is a annoying and worth identifying issue but the result of that shouldn’t be anything more than re education! But those are 2 completely separate areas of the machine, the horizontal alignment is all done via the belt, and I don’t know why it was designed like this the but adjustment wheel is extremely easy to move accidentally and throw out of whack, it should have a locking feature but unless it somehow loosened the top housing to where it sagged(which would be a hugely in need of attention issue) then anything done to the top portion won’t effect the alignment
I guess it might be time to discuss a policy regarding this on-going problem. The sanding belts are $42 for 3 pcs, and are a real pain to install. A lot of times their destruction is from sanding glue off of cutting boards. If you are too lazy to learn how to do a proper glue up, then maybe the rule should be that a member must manually(orbital) sand the item until all of the glue is gone from the surface. I guarantee they wouldn’t be doing this kind of crap if they personally owned the sander and provided the belts out of their own pocket money. The sanding eraser is to get wood out of the belt, not glue. I rarely use the tool and am very thoughtful when I do.
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Why should the orbital suffer the glue either?
It would seem to make sense to me that we should have some card scrapers and either an optional class, or links to videos of how to maintain and use them. If people would pay attention, and use them to shave off the excess glue, it could save a lot of sandpaper.
Bwahaha! 
The reason I suggested that course of action is that members can trot down to Home Depot and buy a bunch of sanding discs. Then they can learn that not gluing things up like a drunken monkey is a better plan. But you are correct, scraping first is a smart idea. The issue I observe with that idea is that people try to save money by attempting to use the worn out scrapers that are still lingering around DMS. I am amazed at how cheap people are regarding not wanting to purchase personal hand tools.
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Honestly that’s one of the main reasons I switched to hide glue, with the 300s strength full dry time extremely quick and the stronger you make it the faster it dries, to the point where when glueing felt to pianos they make it so strong it dries almost instantly so there’s a better quality joint without the waiting a day to dry
I would concur with addressing this problem. I went in last week to use the surface sander, and it left a dark indent on the middle of the board I was surfacing. Had to resand and find another alternative for the second board.
So it’s a little time consuming but if you are feeling conservative you can take the belt of and mean green it then dry it and reuse, or if you’re not you can just grab a new one(only if more than 30-40% of the belt is trashed) that’s not a rule just a suggestion
Regarding glue-ups…there is no need to to have a river or lake of glue running all over work, clamps and work-benches with excessive glue on the work ruining our sanding belts! The key to excellent glue-ups are properly jointed surfaces w/no visible gaps with hand-tight clamping pressure during the test fit! I use painters tape around the boards with only the joint seam exposed and I use the disposable foam brushes to evenly apply the glue. I then immediately remove the tape as soon as the clamps are applied and use a wet paper towels to clean up the excess. All that is needed is a slight scraping after a 24 hr clamp-up. However, people are too lazy to follow thru with this and use the surface planer and drum sander to clean up their glue-ups, ruining those machines fr everyone. Also, I understand that the drum sandpaper needs to be applied in a specific direction…someone applied it in the opposite direction, resulting in machine problems. Also, idiots tend to take too heavy a cut with the drum sander, resulting in the drum going out of horizontal so that work will not feed, resulting in work damage.
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Again feed depth won’t effect the alignment, the little wheel on the side of the machine is the only way use the adjustment, it’s somewhere around the shop but I did this with all the machine, comb through the manual and read over the leveling procedures it’s extremely easy and takes 2-5 mins so it’ll be an easy fix if you ever run into it being out of of whack
Sanding belt bit the dust while I was using it today. I have a three pack ordered and en route.
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Make sure the ones your ordered are powermatic brand specific, I’ve gotten non brand specific 20” and they don’t fit as snug as the brand specific ones, I think it has to do with the angle at which it’s wrapped