Combo Finally Arrived

[Ralph Butts]

Well after much research and scouring every relevent internet article and input from the fine folks here at the creek my new A3 41 jointer planer arrived Tuesday. I got it off the pallet and into the garage Tuesday after about 9 weeks after ordering. Other than the fence/rail system I have not had time to do anything with the machine. Tonight I installed a plug and powered the unit up. What a difference from what I was used to. The machine is extremely quiet. I was so surprised that I had to grab a peice of maple and face joint it. SWEEEET!! The fence movement is not as smooth as I thought it should be until I found the two nylon adjustment screws. I will need to spend a little time with the fence adjustment. I think the stud that supports the rear shield gaurd was bent over during shipping and bending it back I think I tweaked the adjacent sheet metal at the back end of the table. Unfortunately I have too much going on in my life right now to enjoy this new toy. I hope to unpack and install the accessories this weekend and get the fence rail dialed in.

Oh yeah so it actually did happen ...






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[Jim Neeley]

Mighty sweet looking machine, Ralph.. I've got one of those on my wish list. :)

[John Fleming]

Very nice, please post after you get it set up and give us a review.

[Gregory King]

I would like to see those set-up pictures too. By chance, was there a spare one in the box for me ? Never hurts to ask. Greg

[Paul Cahill]

Nice. Which head did you get?

Paul

[David Nelson1]

Very nice! Of course you suck!

[Ralph Butts]

John I will definately post some better pics including what little setup there appears to be. The day of delivery it was raining here in the great pacific northwest (go figure) so I did my best to get the machine off the truck and into the garage as quickly as possible. Paul I purchased the new Felder spiral cutter head thanks in no small part to a lot of feedback here in the forum.
Unfortunately Gregory I had to put my first born male child as collateral for this unit so no spares sorry.

[Bernie May]

what's in all the little boxes stacked on top?
-bernie

[Mike Heidrick]

Sweet! Hope the damage is corrected! I sure would not be tweaking a new combo much without new combo parts on a ship!

[Jeff Monson]

Congrats Ralph, thats a sweet machine you have.

[Ralph Butts]

what's in all the little boxes stacked on top?
-bernie

The boxes contain some accessories I purchased with. 16" extension table, two rails and a digital handwheel.

[Ralph Butts]

Jeff thanks for the compliment. I feel like I owe you an additional thanks for some of the information you provided that helped me to make my decision. I did have second thoughts after I saw your AD741, but I am pretty happy with what I got too.

[howard s hanger]

You will love it. I got a A3-31 a few months back with the silent spiral cutter head. It purrs like a kitten. The digital handwheel is cool beans too. I didn't get the extensions. No room and no real need. Hope you have a good DC. You will need it! BTW, a setup hint. When you put on the infeed bar that also holds the fence, make sure it is perfectly level with the infeed table. If it isn't then you will have to double check the fence for being at 90 deg. I guess I wasn't that careful and the fence was about a degree off 90. It was easy to fix with the two adjustment screws on the back of the curved bracket on the back. Just something to look out for.

[Ralph Butts]

OK so I am finally getting back to my A3 41 unpacking and setup. I have not been able to make any progress for a couple of weeks. I am sorry to say I had a serious health scare that pretty much derailed everything in my life for a few weeks. Fortunately everything has worked out for the best with regards to my scare.

Now lets see...I put the unit into a Grizz super heavy duty mobile base. In my current garage shop the Hammer mobile kit just does not work for me. I got the fence installed correctly and resolved my issue (stupidity). For the most part the supplied directions are in Austrian and unfortunately that is not one of the languages I read. In my defense the diagram provided with the shipment did not match the diagram I was ultimately sent from Hammer support. I don't anticipate having much future communication with technical support but if my experience is a fair indication of what to expect from them the bar is very high. I have a time consuming and hectic work schedule and they were very persistent in trying to get back to me to help. The sales and the brief service experiences I have had with Hammer/Felder will definitely make sure that I look at their offerings when in the market for other tools. I digress...so the fence glides as its supposed to and is now square. I originally installed the mounting fence incorrectly. Following the correct process I mounted the two additional fences I purchased on the jointer outfeed and planer outfeed tables. I also replaced the hardened plastic standard hand wheel with the aluminum digital option. Not sure that I have that accessory properly calibrated. It's close but I think there is still work to be done there. I had a known thickness piece of lumber that I confirmed the thickness with a caliper and snuck up on the measurement with the planer table. However the standard thickness indicator now differs from the digital indicator by about a 1/4 of an inch. The supplied manual notes to see the instructions for calibrating but I have not found anything in the manual which addressed the hand wheel yet. I jointed and planed a piece of walnut and I was pretty happy with the results. I pretty much out of time for rest of November to do anything in the shop. My wife and I are buying a new house (with a stand alone shop) and we have a lot of packing to do including about 15k lbs of steel tools buts that will be another thread.:D

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[David Wong]

Ralph,
Thanks for the pictures. I have the older model A3-31, and it looks like they have made positive changes to the fence, with the tilt positioner closer to the middle, and a stiffer fence extrusion. One question - is the exposed blade guard behind the fence flexible or a single piece? One nice thing about about the old flexible guard is that you can have the machine close to the wall. The new tilt tables look great also. My tables lift separately and lean pass 90°.

Congratulations on your new machine. Be sure to wax the planer table well.

[Ralph Butts]

David the exposed blade guard behind the fence is a single solid piece and will affect how close to a wall you can set the machine. The decision by Hammer to assimilate the Felder "bonded" table feature was a major factor in my choosing this machine. I am really happy with the purchase.

[Don Welch]

Bonded table? Would you expand on this description? I'm considering the jointer only version of the A3-41, reserving the delta cost from the combo to apply toward a 20 inch planer. Being in the Southeast however, I'm a bit far for either showroom to spend some hands on time with the machines. The additional length of the tables and, of course, the width seem appealing but I've wondered about the scale up [from the A3-31] of the cutter head length with the same bearing set [an assumption on my part] / journal diameter and the rigidity of the tables. It's good to hear of your positive experiences.

[Ralph Butts]

Don maybe I should not have used the term bonded. The tables are connected via piece of metal stock that hold them in alignment and allow them to lift and lower as a sold table. I too am not close to a showroom but my rep gladly put me in touch with a local owner willing to let me kick the tires. I would raise the bearing and journal questions directly with a Hammer rep. I never considered that as a potential issue. I will try to take a pic of the table "interlock" tomorrow and post.

[Don Welch]

Ralph - I appreciate the clarification and will look forward to the photos. I've contacted Felder before had had some prompt responses from Fergus Cooke in the CA office; he provided some contacts for older version dual table A3-31 machines in the SE but they aren't nearby and I just haven't set aside weekend travel time to pursue those yet. I will pose the bearing question to them though - likely it's fine; I designed hydraulics and actuation components for a couple of decades and may over focus on these areas.

[Ralph Butts]

Don I don't know how much detail my iphone picture quality is able to capture but here are a couple of pictures of the metal stock connecting the infeed and outfeed tables:


246561 246560 Sorry about the wood but I needed to block the lighting glare from washing out the detail in the photo.

Here are a couple of shots of the bearings I don't know how helpful they will be since they are pretty obscured

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