I am looking for wide belt sander advice

[Brian Cosgrove]

Hi. I am in the market for a wide belt sander. I am a serious hobbiest and will be the only one using it, likely a few hours a week maximum. Based on my anticipated need, I have decided that I want a 36 or 37 inch single head unit. In an attempt to keep the footprint as small as possible, I have come to the conclusion that a used SCMI sandya uno or sandya 1k might be best for me. I looked at Timesavers, but they all seem to be significantly larger for the same width sanding capacity. Is there anyone who has an opinion, one way or the other on either of these machines, or which one might be better for me? I am assuming that the Sandya 1k, being the newer model, might have more electronics that can break, etc, but I am not sure....just my thought. I guess I am looking for input as I am new to wide belts and want to have something I am happy with.

Thanks for the help,

Brian Cosgrove

[Mike Heidrick]

A Timesaver speedsaver is smaller than the full on Timesaver. It is import and would be perfect for a hobbyiest/prosumer/small shop owner. Can be purchased in 7.5 and 10hp single phase as well. They have a VFD built in which is how it is single phase. Should be able to purchase new for less than 10K.

[Brian Cosgrove]

Mike, Thanks for the reply. I did consider the Speedsander and like it a lot, however, I did notice the maximum sanding thickness is 4" vs. 6 1/4" for the mentioned SCMI machines. I think I would rarely/ever need the extra thickness but don't want to be limited if needed.

[Loren Woirhaye]

Wide belts can get pretty beat up in pro shops. Replacement conveyer belts are expensive. They do sell them off wide belts insanely cheap on ebay sometimes though.

Having cleaned and got a somewhat neglected 13" JET wide belt going, I'm glad I started with such a modest machine as it is very, very heavy for its size and as a bare-bones model with no electronics, working on it and figuring it out was not a dead end for me. The engineering in them is pretty cool.

There isn't as much to maintain on them as on edgebanders, but they suffer similar abuse in high-volume shops. I'd try to look at a few and talk with the sellers. Probably they're either upgrading or shutting the business down.

[eugene thomas]

I changed conversation on a halsty. Was job but in end got wide belt for 3 k plus 550 for belt.

[Brian Cosgrove]

Another brand that comes to mind if Safety Speed Cut, which are priced reasonably. Anybody have experience with these?

[Rick Lizek]

Any reason you aren't looking at stroke sanders. More versatile than a widebelt. What are your sanding needs. Describe them. I have 40 years of sanding machine expertise in custom shops factories and metal shops and know quite a lot about sanders.

[J.R. Rutter]

Another brand that comes to mind if Safety Speed Cut, which are priced reasonably. Anybody have experience with these?

They bought Halsty. Pretty basic machine that uses common North American parts.

[Brian Cosgrove]

Rick, my main sanding is end grain butcher block of various sizes, from cutting boards to island tops. Maple, cherry, walnut.

Brian

[David Kumm]

It's probably more important to find condition than brand in the single head 37" machines. You likely want a combo head with either a steel or a hard rubber drum in good shape. Conveyor also should be good with minimal cracking and some depth still left in the waffles. Electric tracking vs pneumatic and a motor size you can handle. I'd want 20 hp on a 37" but you need the amps to handle it and a 5 hp dust collector. SCMI and EMC are the remaining Euro players- along with Houfek. A good Asian machine should be considered too. The older sanders are heavy and the electrics take up a much larger space but are cheaper to fix. SCMI is compact, harder to work on but parts are available. I've had repair guys tell me the old Ramco were pretty good machines. Avoid a platen only head and probably a drum only machine if you will do general sanding. None of the machines will do veneer or sand finishes. Dave

[Guy Belleman]

You mention wanting a 36 or 37 inch wide belt sander. Most "serious hobbiest"s seem to consider the drum sander or stroke sander before a wide belt sander, both of which are a lot cheaper and have a smaller footprint. The Grizzly stroke sander is 700 pounds and 1/8 the cost of a the 37" wide sander, which is also 1800 pounds. The Grizzly 37" drum sander is about a third of the price of the wide belt sander, but comparable in weight at 1400 pounds. A good size dust collection system would a must.

[Brian Cosgrove]

I will admit that I know nothing about stroke sanders and do not want to buy a drum sander just so I can upgrade next year. I did that with my slider and jointer/planer by buying cheap before upgrading to my current Felder machines. I have a 5hp Oneida dust collector and plenty of power.

Brian

[nicholas mitchell]

Before you do anything, read these articles. Lots of excellent info

http://surfprepsanding.com/2014/03/31/does-your-sanding-make-sense/

http://surfprepsanding.com/2013/12/05/a-tale-of-two-grit-sequences/

http://surfprepsanding.com/2014/02/28/the-ultimate-primer-on-single-head-wide-belt-sanding-2/

[Jim Andrew]

Only experience I have is with a 37" speedsander, and my little open end Grizzly, GO9983. The speedsander and Grizzly both use air with their oscillations, the Griz will sand a thick piece of wood, and the open end allows you to sand a wide panel with a relatively small machine. Can't imagine how you would be able to handle a 6" thick countertop of any size, when I built my bench top it was only 3 1/2" thick and I glued it up in halves, and about broke my back handling the halves separately. I ran each through the planer to even them up. It is white oak, and heavy. The old speedsander is probably 15 years old now, and still runs fine. They had some trouble with it, think a bad bearing about 10 years ago, I asked how it was doing and they told me they have had no trouble since that one time. It is in a pro shop. Not that it runs constantly, but they put their face frames through it, and any wood countertops they build.

[Loren Woirhaye]

Stroke sanders are neat. They don't oblige you to sand to a specific thickness. It's kind of like hand planing in that you decide where the belt goes. The burnishing issue that can come up with sanders that calibrate thickness (drum, wide belt) are avoided more easily with a stroke sander. Wide belts can be great time saving machines of course if one is using the machine wisely.

[Brian Cosgrove]

Thanks for all of the input so far. Another question for discussion........I have plenty of power to run a phase converter for a larger machine and everything I read points to 3 phase being preferred over the single phase, which I am fine with, however, various companies do make 36" 10 hp single phase units (grizzly, safety speed cut, extrema, timesavers speedsander). Does anyone have personal experience with units of this size and if so, do you find them underpowered? Single phase would be easier but it seems that if I can get a decent scmi sandya uno (18 hp 3 phase) for 5000-6000 plus a phase converter (1500), I would be better off than say 7000 for a single phase with less power. It seems that the larger units in single phase are less available used and when they are, they are in my eye, overpriced. New ones seem to float in the $10000 range, which at that price, brings me immediately back to 3 phase units. Any advice and or personal experience would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[David Kumm]

My Sandya 24" runs a 12 hp motor and I would want no less. For a 37" 18 would be my minimum. Not that you want to get greedy and hog too much off but every once in a while you get into a spot where you amp draw spikes and it is nice to have some room. Generally you want to run a sander at 50-60% of fla. Dave

PS Once you get over 5 hp, three phase is the way to go.

[Kent A Bathurst]

Brian -



Your PM bucket overfloweth.

[Brian Cosgrove]

Thank you Kent. I hadn't noticed it was full. Bucket emptied

[Erik Loza]

Brian, just my thoughts. Take or leave as you will.

1.) Three-phase is the way to go on a WB.
2.) As mentioned earlier, dust collection will be your biggest concern.
3.) As Dave K. mentioned earlier, condition is more important than brand. In my professional experience, the two biggest "nightmare machines" on the used market are widebelts and edgebanders. 99.9% of them will have come from production shops where care may or may not have been taken in their maintenance. I have lost track of the number of guys whom, by the time our parts staff got through with them after their too-good-to-be-true auction finds, wished they would have bought new. That is not to say that you could not score a good deal on a used WB. Just to say that you really need to do your due diligence in reseaching its actual running condition.

Best of luck in your search.

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[Albert Lee]

Hi Brian

I was in your shoes for a long time and I have recently bought my 37" SCM Sandya Uno ($1350USD) and upgrade the power to my workshop to 3 phase (about $4000USD).

Before I made a decision to buy the wide belt sander I have now, I have seen quite a few other SCM machines, they have all taken a lot of abuse over the years - they all have dysfunctional features or broken gauge/readout/handlebars, the machine I bought has been kept in storage for years and was not used much when it was in duty, everything is in prestine condition, the owner only wanted $1350, I dont think they know the value of these machines, just recently I have seen a similar spec/condition machine sold for $4000 in a machinery dealer.

I agree with your approach, less electronic is better than more, especially European, where electronic isnt their strong point.... SCM is pretty good, they have their manuals online, you can find manuals up to 30 years old.

my machine measures 67" tall by 55" wide and 40" deep. its a 11kw/15hp unit, you only need the full power when you are sanding a very wide board and doing a very deep cut/sand.

You know you need compressor to run a WB right? the wide belt sander uses compressed air to tension the belt, a 15+ years old Sandya Uno or SCM 37" wide sander uses 3.53CFM for the tensioning and the oscillation, the ones with nozzle blower uses 700litres/min(took me awhile to find this figure, its only on the hardcopy user manual, not online), which is about 25CFM continuously. depending on how long you will use the sander, you need a huge compressor if you bought one with nozzle blower.

I bought a Hydrovane compressor (100% duty cycle, 39CFM, 10hp machine) to service the sander, its probably too big for my small workshop...

And as for your extractor, you will need something bigger than 5hp to service the sander, clean it regularly and keep it close to the sander, otherwise you will have fine dust escaping the sander...

I had to start my machines in a special sequence otherwise I will have power issue I only have 60amp at 415volt 3 phase. if you are like me in a residential neighbourhood or has small power supply, star-delta starter is a must otherwise you may have issue with inrush current(many SCM sander has star-delta as standard), Variable frequency drive is even better, but a VFD rated for 11kw machine is about $2500USD....

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[Scott T Smith]

Hi Brian. I'll reinforce a couple of comments that have already been made by other posters.

First, over 5 hp 3 phase is the best option, not only for wire sizing but also due to inrush current. If you may be considering more 3 phase equipment consider installing a large rotary phase converter wired to a dedicated 3-phase load center. That way you only have to incur this expense one time as opposed to slaving a RPC or VFD to every piece of equipment.

Second, more HP is better when it comes to WBS. I have a 37", 25 hp EMC unit and I cannot imagine having less HP when sanding a wide surface.

Third, a 5 hp Oneida can successfully evacuate a WBS (I've used one in the past), but you will need good gates on everything else in the circuit so that you can have maximum suction at the WBS. Consider mounting a ceiling whole shop air filter near the WBS because you will probably get some dust leakage no matter what.

[Cody Armstrong]

Hey Brian, your getting some good advice. I went through this last year. You may want to read this thread http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?196735-If-you-could-buy-a-new-single-head-wide-belt&highlight=

I bought a wide belt at the time specifically for cutting boards. Your definitely gonna want a platen to finish end grain to 220 grit and up. End grain is a different creature than edge grain and will show the sanding scratches terribly.(you may know this already)
Depending how far you take it even after 320 grit I still sand with an air powered dynabrade random orbital sander to get the 320 scratches out. You have to take light passes with the finer grits on the WB and be very careful not to burn the material your sanding.
It can wreck a belt quick and leave a burned streak across a board. You will find this out if you don't already know.

I would try to find a good used machine with a 75" belt and fluted contact drum no less than 4" in dia. Most definitely 3 phase.
Make sure the conveyor belt and contact drum are in good condition. Your looking at 1000.00 dollars a piece depending on what machine you buy to replace or repair the drum and belt. If their not in good condition have the seller knock it off the price of the machine. Your gonna want the drum to be in excellent condition for end grain work. If the drum has minor wear on it is an easy fix. You can do this buy glueing a piece of sandpaper to an aluminum plate and running it under the drum.(consolidated version of this process, ask before you do this :) )
You'll want to check the metal plate the conveyor rides over to make sure it doesn't have any sway to it.
One thing I ran into with using a phase converter was I was getting too high a voltage and it was tripping the internal breaker for the motor that turns the conveyor belt. Fortunately my dust collector is 3 phase also so by running the DC it drops the voltage just enough to prevent the breaker that powers the conveyor belt from tripping. I just have to be sure the DC is on before I power up the conveyor.