Looking for help from a Hammer A3-31 owner

[Glenn de Souza]

Hello,

I just took delivery of a new Hammer A3-31 and spent part of the day getting off the pallet and setting it up. All has gone pretty well except there was no documentation with the aluminum extrusion accessory table extension, and I'm looking for info on how to mount the hardware on it so it will attach to the mating rail. The hardware consists of three nuts and assorted bolts, washers, a crank handle, a steel plate and a short length of steel rod. I had no trouble mounting the two rails, one on the jointer infeed, and the other on the planer outfeed.

Attached is a photo of the table extension and the hardware bag.

Even a photo of the underside of someone else's assembled table extension would probably give me all I need to know.

By the way, the A3-31 looks to be a very well made and robust machine.

Thanks in advance,

Glenn

323538

[Jamie Buxton]

The Hammer web site has a bunch of downloads about the A3-31. Maybe one of those answers your questions? http://www.hammerusa.com/us-us/products/jointers--planers/jointer-planer-a3-31--310-mm-instructions-downloads.html?

[Richard Dylan]

I was tried maximum time to open hammerusa site but it's not worked

[Jamie Buxton]

I was tried maximum time to open hammerusa site but it's not worked

Odd.. It worked quickly for me last night, and again this morning.

[glenn bradley]

No problem with the site here.

[Glenn de Souza]

Thanks Jamie, I had looked through the Hammer downloads, and there was a good one on mounting the fence extrusion, to which the table extension mounts, but nothing on how to organize the hardware on the table itself.

I may just tinker with it today. I can tell the two bolt heads go into the channel in the extrusion and probably through the round bar (and then the steel plate?). Then there is a third unique bolt with its own washer and nut and I'm not certain where it goes....

[Barry Block]

If I were in the shop to look at it I could help you.

Not to high jack your thread but I have been meaning to write about this and its something you should know. I own the same machine purchased about a year ago. Calibration etc looked good out of the box and was up and running in no time. A few weeks ago while using the machine I noticed something wasn't right. When jointing a board the back end of the board didn't seem to be hitting the cutter head like it should regardless of how many times I put it through. So I got the calipers out and a machinist strait edge. I assumed the outfeed table wasn't coplanar with the infeed and took a dip in the rear of the bed. Nope. It actually had a bow or dip in the outfeed table which started about 2 inches back from the cutter head and about 16 inches towards the end of the outfeed table. Now we aren't talking a few 1000's. Were talking 9-10 1000's. almost 100th of an inch. So I called Felder. Day 2 after sending photo's the tech told me he's seen in before and likely it was calibrated incorrectly at the manufacturer and it just took time for the bed to settle onto the pressure points for it to show. Ok I can see where that would happen. Now time is money for me and I spend enough of it already on maintence so I asked if they would be sending someone out. I explained a few 1000's would be no problem and I would calibrate it myself but having to correct almost 100th of an inch which may or may not even be able to be corrected was a bit much especially seeing that it came out of the manufacturer that way. I was told he would talk to his supervisor. Day three the story changed a little. "Well we can't be certain it did come from the manufacturer that way so we can send you the info neciassary to correct it your self "I add if it can be" So in the interest of curiousity and time I ask how much felder would charge for someone to come out. Here is where I atleast expected some help but no, full bend over rates applied. 100$ drive time with a minimum of an hour each way and then 65$ per hour with a 3 hour minimum. To me this is ridiculous! This is for a machine they rep, maufacturer and distribute which I purchased less then a year ago. 65 an hour I can live with but then to tack on another 2-300$ in drive time. Come on.

Maybe I'm just pissed because I really can't afford that kind of pricing right now nor can I afford the time to fix it myself if it can be fixed but I am not happy with Felder right now. And this will certainly be impacting my buying decisions in the future with them.

[Susumu Mori]

Hi Glenn,

I don't know if I can attach a Hammer document here in the forum. So I'll PM you with the attachment.

Yes, I do remember I was very confused too when I was attaching a long extension table few months ago because it didn't come with the diagram.
But then, I noticed that I somehow attached a short table a year ago without a problem. It turns out the short table came with this diagram,,,,

[James Zhu]

If I were in the shop to look at it I could help you.

Not to high jack your thread but I have been meaning to write about this and its something you should know. I own the same machine purchased about a year ago. Calibration etc looked good out of the box and was up and running in no time. A few weeks ago while using the machine I noticed something wasn't right. When jointing a board the back end of the board didn't seem to be hitting the cutter head like it should regardless of how many times I put it through. So I got the calipers out and a machinist strait edge. I assumed the outfeed table wasn't coplanar with the infeed and took a dip in the rear of the bed. Nope. It actually had a bow or dip in the outfeed table which started about 2 inches back from the cutter head and about 16 inches towards the end of the outfeed table. Now we aren't talking a few 1000's. Were talking 9-10 1000's. almost 100th of an inch. So I called Felder. Day 2 after sending photo's the tech told me he's seen in before and likely it was calibrated incorrectly at the manufacturer and it just took time for the bed to settle onto the pressure points for it to show. Ok I can see where that would happen. Now time is money for me and I spend enough of it already on maintence so I asked if they would be sending someone out. I explained a few 1000's would be no problem and I would calibrate it myself but having to correct almost 100th of an inch which may or may not even be able to be corrected was a bit much especially seeing that it came out of the manufacturer that way. I was told he would talk to his supervisor. Day three the story changed a little. "Well we can't be certain it did come from the manufacturer that way so we can send you the info neciassary to correct it your self "I add if it can be" So in the interest of curiousity and time I ask how much felder would charge for someone to come out. Here is where I atleast expected some help but no, full bend over rates applied. 100$ drive time with a minimum of an hour each way and then 65$ per hour with a 3 hour minimum. To me this is ridiculous! This is for a machine they rep, maufacturer and distribute which I purchased less then a year ago. 65 an hour I can live with but then to tack on another 2-300$ in drive time. Come on.

Maybe I'm just pissed because I really can't afford that kind of pricing right now nor can I afford the time to fix it myself if it can be fixed but I am not happy with Felder right now. And this will certainly be impacting my buying decisions in the future with them.

Sorry to hear that, agree the service charge is too much given the fact that it looks like Felder's quality control issue. You might want to post it in Yahoo Felder forum. There are some very knowledgeable people who know very well how to calibrate the machine and are also willing to help if you want to spend some time to learn it, it is not rocket science :) Once you master the calibration techniques, you have no worry down the load.

[Steve Grimes]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wUziBEpffk at 5:55?

[Glenn de Souza]

Thank you Steve and Susumu, I got what I need, good to go!

[ian maybury]

Hi Barry. Again not to hijack the thread. It's hard to get a handle on the incidence, but for sure problems do seem to crop up from time to time with table flatness and other alignments on Hammer planer thicknessers.

I posted about my experience before - having ended up spending a huge amount of my own time (and a significant amount of money) sorting out (hand scraping) the tables of my 2011 A3 410 which came with dips and humps that prevented it being set up to joint consistently straight. The fact of the matter is that more than a couple of thou out of flatness/coplanarity over the length of a table is enough to create detectable change so far as jointing is concerned - and not much more if unfortunately placed can cause insurmountable effects that can't be reliably or acceptably compensated for by adjustment if you need the machine to perform consistently. A dip of about 0.005in deep in the middle of the infeed table of mine just before the knives, and a ridge of about a couple of thou high across the width just before it (actually on both tables) overlaid on some background twist forced remedial action.

The ability to (if the machine is set up to do so - there's times when it may instead need to be set up to deliver a very slight curve as in the case of a sprung joint) consistently and repeatably joint a truly straight edge anywhere across the width the the table is probably the gold standard - in that only straight is straight. The rub in my experience despite all the hocus and mystique about jointer 'set up' is that achieving this requires very close to perfectly flat and coplanar tables - and a correctly set knife height. Flat tables make it much more likely that that when it is required to joint said very slight curve that it will respond predictably to adjustments too.

The then 'alignment' manual for the machine (which unlike the 'adjustments' or set up manual didn't seem to be widely circulated) from memory says that if the table is flat within a generous to say the least 0.010in over its entire length that it's within spec. The manuals in effect make no claim that the machine can joint straight by implying that a concave jointed board with no snipe is the objective. Fine if you are gluing up boards, but what if you need straight stock? They do this by pitching a centre gap of anywhere between zero and 0.008in on two 39in (1m) boards placed jointed edge to jointed edge as the spec. (interesting treatment of the issue!!!!!) My own experience suggests that when the tables are even a bit off that achieving this can be problematical at times without resorting to extreme settings with other consequences for performance and consistency. Heaven knows the scale of the problems you would end up with if you were unlucky enough to be supplied with a machine where all of the various alignments/permitted tolerances happened by some chance simultaneously to end up at the worst end of their ranges.

It'd be interesting (but inadvisable on a public forum) to speculate as to why the spec/manual creates so few hostages to fortune.

There's a lot of happy talk that floats about on these matters, but my experience (the issues didn't due to illness come to light until it was just out of warranty - but the machine had not even been switched on never mind used in the interval) was that when push came to shove there wasn't any follow through (at least not in the context of actions/stuff that might have cost money to fix) despite the issue being raised at senior levels. Just lots of talk. My experience might suggest that if a machine is within their spec and/or the company is not strictly and clearly contractually responsible by their contract that it's going to be tough to get anything moving. Hopefully this won't prove to be so in your case.....