Jointed moulder

[Joshua Cummings]

Hi everyone, i'm currently running an unjointed moulder with 7200 rpm, doing mainly tropics hardwoods like Ipe and massaranduba. My current feed speed is around 12 meters per minute. I'm wondering if I use hydro blocks along with pre-set carbide insert tooling if it can give me stability in my cutting circle and potentially make my moulder "jointed"? What are your thoughts?

[Mel Fulks]

I'm not a moulder operator. I do have experience grinding knives by template and by hand. You don't really say what the
problem is. Is it surface quality? Having to resharpen too often? Both? The best surfaces I ve seen were produced with hand ground knives in the old square heads. If you are not already using a good premium steel I would try that first.

[Mel Fulks]

I certainly understand that you are not likely to be interested in getting square heads, just making the point that they were polar opposite of jointed knives but produced a superb surface.

[Peter Quinn]

I think you may get more responses on wood web, this is not really the place where molder operators gather IME. On that note as Mel said can you more accurately describe the symptoms or the problem you are attempting to over come? Are you getting taper across the faces, or a rough surface because only parts of each knife are touching at a given point in the width? Are the knives at least well balanced? Who is grinding your knives that they are unjointed? Can you send them the head as well to grind in head? Have you looked into terminus heads?

[peter gagliardi]

Hydro heads go a long way towards giving a multi knife finish at high feed speeds. Any slip on style head is only effectively giving a " one knife finish" , due to the fact that there has to be a little slop- 1/2-1 1/2 thousandths play to be able to remove and install the head from the spindle. Hydros were invented to "center" the head on the shaft. But your grinding better be perfect to support it.

[Joshua Cummings]

What i'm trying to achieve is higher feed speeds without a loss of surface quality..

[jack forsberg]

those are offal woods to mill. How many knifes in the heads and 12 meters is not a bad speed.

[J.R. Rutter]

You can get closer with centered heads and precision knife setup, but short of actually stoning each head in place, it won't be "jointed"...

I agree - ask on woodweb's solid wood machining forum.

[Joshua Cummings]

I appreciate all the help you have given to me, i'll check woodweb's forum. Thank you all again