The planer belongs to the group of special equipment designed for straight-line processing (chamfering) of workpieces and wood products. There are many types of devices. They allow you to perform the primary processing of wood, preparing it for further decoration.
Machine tools have the ability to chamfer at different angles, vary in width of the workpiece, have different table lengths and engine power.
Depending on the size of the work surface and the parameters of the workpieces, the planer can be of the following types:
- lightweight models with a maximum milling width of up to 25 cm;
- medium (40 cm);
- heavy (up to 630 mm).
By the number of cutting tools produce single and double-sided devices. The first single-spindle devices are capable of processing only the lower part of the workpiece in one pass. On two-sided mechanisms, two adjacent sides of the product (edge and face) are simultaneously milled.
The planer can be produced with mechanical feed of the workpiece or manual. In the first case, the product is moved using the built-in atopic feeder or conveyor mechanism.
The one-sided device with manual feed in its design has a bed on which the knife shaft, the rear and front tables, as well as the guide bar, are located. The cutting shaft is driven by an electric motor through a V-belt drive. The motor is mounted on a special plate located inside the bed.
In principle, the device has a simple design, and if you have the required parts and assemblies, you can assemble the planer yourself. Also, the design is equipped with a brake, which operates from an electromagnet and allows you to quickly stop the blade shaft. To change the thickness of the layer of wood to be removed, a handle is used with which the table moves in height and is adjustable on a scale.
Such a jointing machine in the manufacture of carpentry building products is able to serve one person, if the length of the products is less than one and a half meters.
In the process, it is necessary to evenly feed the workpiece onto the knife shaft, avoiding jolts and jerks, while the speed should be 6-10 meters per minute. When working, you must follow the safety rules, keeping your hands at a remote distance from the cutting element.
To finish two adjacent surfaces of the product, the face is first milled and then taken over the edge. A two-sided planer allows you to do this in one pass. When working with products longer than 1.5 meters, two people should service the device. One of them feeds the workpiece into the machine, pressing it to the guide ruler and the front table, the second worker helps to keep the product on the back table. If the wood has a slanting, or it is milling against fibers, then for high-quality processing, the feed rate is recommended to be reduced.
To control the quality of finishing of products, it is necessary to attach the treated surfaces to each other and visually compare the presence and size of the gap between them. Well-bonded wood should not have chips, longitudinal stripes, breakouts and other defects.