Performax 16-32

[Troy John]

How does the older performax 16-32 compare to the new jet 16-32?
I have an chance to buy one for $350, and the new jets are $950, is there anything to watch out for on the older ones? Or is this a good deal?
Thanks, Troy

[Jack Ganssle]

I have an older Performax and it came with a real Leeson motor. Watch out for vibration in the drum. Plan to spend some time tuning it. I find it to be an excellent tool that performs much better than one hears about these things.

[Troy John]

Ive heard these things sometimes track the belt to one side, Has this been a problem for you?
Are the performax's adjustable to get the table paralell to the drum? Is the drum sturdy and the up down rails that hold it well built?
Thanks for your feedback.

[Bill Arnold]

I've had the Performax 16-32 for several years and have used it a lot. You need to have a little patience adjusting the drum to be parallel to the table/belt. I made two blocks, one to place at each end of the drum to judge the parallelism.

Edit: I buy 3" wide shop rolls of paper to make my own strips - much cheaper.

[Jack Ganssle]

It's more finicky than a jointer or planer, and, yes, you have to mess with it to get the belt tracking right. And getting the drum parallel to the belt can take some time. But I sure like the machine and use it a lot.

[Robert Chapman]

One major innovation is the automatically contolled speed of the infeed belt so you are less likely to burn your wood with too deep a cut or too fast an infeed.

[John Coloccia]

Conveyor tracking can be a problem with these things. Also, don't pay attention to the minimum thickness specs. If you go down to 1/16", you will suck the conveyor into the drum as soon as you turn on dust collection. You will need a sled for thin items, and that also means you might need infeed and outfeed supports.

When it works, it works great but it's very finicky. I'm on the fence if I'd buy it again. If anything, I might buy one used.

re: the jet
As far as I know, the only thing they changed that really maters is the addition of the automatic speed limiter. Honestly, though, I don't find this is really worth much. I find that once it kicks on it's too late, often times. After a bit, you learn to judge what's going on just from listening to it, and you learn how much you can take off how fast. It's certainly not a $600 feature.

For $350, it sounds like might be a decent deal if the conveyor can be made to track straight and the drum doesn't shake. Everything else can pretty much be adjusted. Even a poorly tracking conveyor can be fixed with perhaps a new drive roller and some adjustments. I'm not really sure what they go for on the used market, though, so you may just want to check around a bit if you're really in the market for one.

I know this all sounds negative, but I really do love mine when it's working. It just takes a while to get there sometimes.