Question
I have a small 1-2 man shop, and currently have no drum sander. I have needed one for a long time and it's looking as if an upcoming job may give me the nudge I need.
Should I stay away from an open end unit like a Jet 2244? I was looking at the Grizzly 24", but of course the occasional time we need to run something wider than 24", the Jet would be handy.
I realize neither of these are commercial units, but with the economy the way it is, we are trying to be spend conscious. General sanding after planing, and occasionally we make a run of cabinet doors and drawer boxes in house.
Forum Responses
(Cabinetmaking Forum)
From contributor B:
I wouldn't buy a drum sander unless it was just a crazy amazing deal, too good to pass up, and will get you by until you can get a wide belt sander. Wide belt sanders are so much better. Wide belt sanders are faster, have a higher quality surface, and are really easy to change out grits on. Changing the paper is kind of a pain and when we had a drum sander, we left one grit on all the time. With the belt sander, in a minute we can switch belts and work up the grit cycle. There is also the whole platen thing. Drum sander is better than no sander, but a belt sander is way better than a drum sander.
Simply put, the widebelt is better than the drum, but I didn't have the money for a widebelt and just couldn't justify it for a 2 man shop, so I ended up buying a new Shop Fox 26'' double drum for about $1600, and I am well satisfied. The paper will last a long time if you don't use it like a planer, and I put the rubber stick to mine to clean it from time to time.
If I had a widebelt, no doubt I would encourage you to get one, but I just really like my double drum. I will say that dust collection on mine is poor. I suspect it might be on all of them. I would definitely stay away from an open end, and I would get as wide as I could get. If I had it to do over, I would get a 37'' without hesitation.
Second, I am space limited in a fairly small shop. My building is 4k square, but it's broken up and the shop area is open but a bit congested. I would have to do a lot of shuffling.
Third, I am not sure I have the dust collection for a widebelt and the locations I would have for it would likely be too distant from our cyclone, which would either require more shuffling or an additional collector just for the widebelt (more money).
I was mainly looking for something to send parts through just to clean up planer/jointer marks rather than going the RO option (which is what we currently are doing) that was mentioned. Have plenty of that option and it's what I was hoping to get away from.
I often run a lot of flat trim in longish lengths and so on, which would be nice to just send through a sander rather than hand sanding every piece, which is brutally time consuming.
Will have to keep thinking, but contributor F's reply (while you can always find the answer you want) was more in keeping with what I was thinking. It's by far the best option, but then again, I could use a CNC too once in a while, but I don't have one.
Musts on drum sanders:
No open ends (had one once)
AMP meter
feed rate knob
hook and loop paper
I looked at several of the drum sanders out there and went with the Powermatic dual drum. I found it to be very well built for an Asian import. If you go slow and don't try to push the machine, it will get you there. An amp meter would be nice, but if you know what you're doing, it's not really necessary. You'll know by the sound of the machine how you're doing. I also would not recommend the hook and loop. I have not used it myself, but have heard from others about problems due to the give of the hook and loop. I had smooth rubber coated drums and they work very well.
I also would not recommend an open end sander. You're better off getting a wider drum. I started out with a Performax 16/32 and hated everything about it. Had it less than a year before buying the Powermatic. Now I have a basic widebelt and it's like night and day. Like you, I had to reorganize half of my shop, move a lot of equipment, and of course do the wiring and dust collection setup. In the end it was worth it though, and the time it saves will quickly pay for itself.
A wide belt with a combo head and the right paper will allow you to sand and ship. They are a bargain now with so many on the market - they will never be cheaper.
I have found with the Woodmaster you can get very good results - just as good as a widebelt (probably going to catch it for that one). That said, it is a lot slower than a widebelt and you cannot horse the stock through it. But progressing through the grits from 80 on up, it will do a great job. I would run far away from the open ended ones though. There is flex and you can't have that and achieve satisfactory results. You need a closed end model.
Either way, though, you still need to finish with an RO sander to get rid of the scratches left by either. Another problem inherent with both of them is roller marks and other artifacts that you don't always see until the finish is applied.
If a drum is in the budget and a widebelt is not, by all means go with a good drum.
I didn't like the open ended drum sander I had when first starting out. It was very slow and usually burned a door in every run when the paper stretched and overlapped. Trying to do wide parts in two passes was always rolling the dice. I then had a dual drum 37" Extrema for a few years until I could afford a wide belt. The heavy duty dual drum did a pretty nice job kept loaded with 120/180. No chattermarks to speak of. I have heard good things about the Velcro drum Woodmasters.
A multiple head wide belt is the right tool for the job, but the right dual drum can get you by in the mean time. Two drums work pretty well once you get the second drum aligned to barely remove the scratches left by the first with your chosen grits. You want a design that will take up slack as the abrasives stretch as they heat up. I would pick two grits and stick with them. Get to know the limits of the machine and it can make you money.
A shop I sometimes buy doors at has huge widebelts, and they RO sand before shipping as well.
Klingspore also has the rolls of paper at a good cost. Having that Velcro covered drum makes it very fast to change paper, and it allows the paper to flex when it tightens on the drum, unlike the clip systems, and if you are sanding small pieces you can do half the drum in one grit and the other half in the next grit, saving even more time.
Initially an amp meter would have been handy because I was tripping the breaker. Once I figured out what I could and couldn't do with the machine (and got it properly set up), I quit tripping the breaker. Mine now has a fixed feed of ~11FPM and I don't miss the adjustable feed rate that the machine came with. The give of the hook and loop can make wrapping the drum tightly/evenly a bit of a challenge, but in usage it's only an issue if you force feed the machine.
I heard Jet came out with a version that has an oscillating drum to reduce the inline scratches left from the straight line sanding. It would be interesting to see the results from that machine.
I also came up with an invention for my drum sander. I hooked up an air supply with a valve on it to a piece of copper tube. The valve was to supply just a little air pressure. I drilled small holes in the copper on one side and aimed it down towards the wood coming out of the sander and blew the sawdust back into the machine. It works great and I have no more dust problems. The pieces come out with absolutely no dust on them, but be careful to not overdo the pressure or it will blow back out the front.
