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Drum Sander 3hp vs 5hp

1/3/16       
Howard Member

Happy New Year All!! Just upgraded my lathe to a PM 3580 and waiting delivery. It got me thinking about my drumsander. I have a General 3hp and my major issue with it is that it takes forever to get a surface that I'm happy with. I can't spring for a wide belt, but I wanted to know if a 5hp drumsander would really make much of a difference in performance, what are your opinions on this??? If it's not much of a difference, I'll wait for the day to get a wide belt. THanks

1/4/16       #3: Drum Sander 3hp vs 5hp ...
JR Rutter Member

Website: http://harmonicdesignworks.com

When I started out in my garage many years ago, I had a Performax single drum sander. It seemed to take forever and if i wasn't extremely patient, the abrasive would shift and burn.

I didn't have much power capacity, so I went to a double drum Extrema. It was easily twice as fast for feed rate, and of course left a better finish because I could run a finer grit on the back drum. Another reason why it was better was larger diameter drums, and a rubber coated rear drum.

The current sander is a 2 head widebelt and it is easily twice as fast for feed rate compared to the Extrema (so 4x as fast as the Performax) and the finish quality is far better.

So my advice is not to upgrade a drum sander based on HP alone. You need bigger, more, and better drum(s) to see any advantage.

1/4/16       #4: Drum Sander 3hp vs 5hp ...
JeffD

My advice FWIW.....think about picking up a small used wide belt instead. If your lucky you can find one in decent shape for less than the cost of a new drum sander. I followed a very similar path to JR except I run a 43" single head Timesaver. I paid next to nothing for mine as it's too big for most small shops and too old for most larger shops.

My previous sander was a Powermatic 24" dual drum and it was easily one of the best on the market when I bought it. Much heavier build than most of the others and the 5 hp was adequate for a machine that size. 3 HP would be a little small but probably OK for a single head. I just don't think I'd want to invest on a small upgrade like that.

good luck,
JeffD


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