What’s the diagnosis with the drum sander and how can I help? Fix it? Shop for replacement? Just be patient?
Send a PM in event using my drum sander helps out in a bind.
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There’s no current notes on the drum sander past this:
Actually, the reply just past that one. We may still be waiting on a good replacement board. @got_tools should know…
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it’s being left locked out… @SWA he’s would be the best person to talk to regarding returning to service…
The drum sander is functional… however the sand logic isn’t sending reading to the display board… this means the drum sander slows to a crawl if to much material is being removed… like it should… however there is NO visible indication on the display that two many amps are being drawn and to let the operator know they need to back off the pressure on the drum…
We have a dickens of a time in getting parts form powermatic… they are going to send us a replacement part for the defect board they sent us, the part is out is stock and the eta for the replacement is early august…
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More importantly my gear/shaft is still intact. 
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We don’t want to talk about your gear shaft in polite company… 
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What would the likely hood of say putting a Moratorium on other large wood shop purchases for say Q3 of the year and diverting them to be used to purchase a large one where parts are accessible! I’m mean honestly if we billed just the man hours the machine shop guys have put into this at a retail price we’re well over double the price of a new machine and considering a brand new wider one if the same cost as when we have to replace the filter (full set) on the dust collector I definitely think this is a staple piece of machinery that should be given a vote or atleast some thought to move away from headachematic I mean powermatic
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We have been looking for a used wide belt sander. Belt sanders have many advantages vs a drum sander, other than cost.
For your consideration. Even if it’s not a desirable drum sander, a working drum sander at an acceptable cost seems amazing at this point.
I see the tool familiarity needed to swap the sandpaper the crux to that plan! While better yes the down time that’s going to happen due to pretty much a training class on replacing the paper makes that well outweighs the pros and it removes the possibility like for instance I like to default that the papers gonna be well used so I just buy a 3 pack of papers and swap them out. Same thing with the big bandsaw I have my own blade so I never rely on luck to have it function correctly! Having a belt will make that almost infeasible price and swap out time wise
I have sent like 10 used drum sander posts on Facebook marketplace to the woodshop committee. None of them have even gone to look at any. If you want to look at the posts, go visit the sanders, and make a purchase I think that is the best route. Old timesavers sanders are 100x better than that POS grizzly you posted above. Like it or not we need an industrial machine because industrial work is being performed. That grizzly is for a one man shop. It isn’t made for 200 cutting boards daily. It’s cheap Chinese manufacturing. Older machines are much easier to service and make parts for. The designs are much simpler. The main issues with a used sander is footprint and power requirements. I would suggest a 36inch wide timesavers like this one:
Yea but when a 10 year old better machine fails guess what you run into when needing parts? Hmmm familiar issue. Hits buying a new yet less “better” machine but if something brakes its 2 day shipping vs 3 month possibility on a back ordered out of stock no longer manufactured replacement part plus warranties are always nice
Old machines were designed to last, Replace bearings when needed or motors and there is not much else that could fail. New cost reduced copies of copies of copies of old machines are designed to barely get through the warranty period.
Getting a wide belt sander immediately is low priority, we don’t really have space to install it or store it and we definitely wouldn’t have the power they need. It makes more sense to wait till we are making some progress on woodshop expansion then look at getting a good used machine so we can get power put in as part of the expansion project.
@SWA and I have talked about it a few times, I don’t think it is a matter of IF we get a wide belt sander, just the WHEN.
The machine was manufactured in 2017… this isn’t an age thing… this is a powermatic thing… they only buy from their suppliers every 5 months…
The sad thing is it’s the times we live in now. Planned obsolescence & consumerism towards the next “Shiny” thing.
Equipment today is not designed to last like it was even 20 years ago. The stuff I work on that was put in 20 years ago was intended to last 30 years. Now that same equipment is only designed to last 15-20 years.
Point is a machine that’s even 25-30 years old once rebuilt should last another 25-30 years. That equates to 5 Makerspace years.
Take the powermatic, we fixed the mechanical parts that failed & were back ordered until next century. Now it’s the electronics that are the problems, those are even harder to repair due to the complexities of reverse engineering to find a bad component.
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So I’d think this not be a powermatic thing large industrial machine = smaller market = less parts available small sized shop machine = larger markets = bigger parts supply
So are we putting any redundancies in place, because during my time here know of literally 3 board replacements or control board replacmwnts! So if you can rebuild mechanicals to.be like.theu were back in the make em fast and make em last era wouldn’t it be smarter to.do.it on a machine where the parts supple wasn’t dwindiliing to basically issue= 3-9 months down time.
And my. point being what would that invoice look like if you guys billed the time spent! It’s be literally 10000’s of dollars just on your sweat alone! So at one point I may just be smarter to.invest that in a machine with more readily available parts
This machine is abused by members as a thickness planer. This is a user issue as much as a machine issue. This machine was designed to remove very small amounts of material, primarily for cleaning up cabinet doors. Woodshop is working through the details on how to best manage this resource. Most likely it will be available via some type of appointment system. Until a better solution can be devised via technology, it is either this or a broken machine that isn’t available at any time, for anyone.
This is wrong category of machine for this environment without additional safe guards.
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