Two powerfeeds, one shaper.

[Martin Wasner]

Anyone ever mount two powerfeeders on a single shaper before? I picked up a couple of four wheeled Steff feeders. One went on the panel raiser, the other went on the shaper I used for sticking and sizing face frame material. On the panel raiser it works flawlessly. On the sticking shaper it works well for the most part, but being that it is cocked at an angle to hold material tight to the fence, when I run narrower material, it's barely hanging onto that last wheel, and it can mush out past the wheel occasionally. The feeder is so long that I'm not running it as large of an angle as I would like to really hold stuff against the fence as well. Mostly when dealing with material that isn't flawlessly straight and keeping a consistent cut width as I use an outboard fence for this process Going with two three wheel feeders would eliminate that I would think. I'm pretty sure I could get them close enough to one another to not create too much of a gap between the last wheel of the first shaper, and the first wheel of the last shaper.

But, I don't know if there is too much discrepancy in feed rates between one feeder and the next to make that work well? I'd assume they're likely close enough though.

Thoughts?

[Mark Wooden]

You have to get your fence thinner than the stock your running so the far wheels can hang over the fence, i.e.- 3/4" stock, 1/2" fence so you can get the angle you want on the feeder. You should be able to get the stock all the way through with one feeder.

[Justin Ludwig]

You have to get your fence thinner than the stock your running so the far wheels can hang over the fence, i.e.- 3/4" stock, 1/2" fence so you can get the angle you want on the feeder. You should be able to get the stock all the way through with one feeder.

Yep. I plane my back fence down to 9/16. I set the feeder at 5/8" off the table for 3/4" stock. That way I don't have to adjust the feeder when changing from 5" to 2-3/8" to 1-1/2" rails.

[Martin Wasner]

I don't adjust the feeder placement for sizes. It's as tight to the top cutter as it can get, so making the fence shorter than the material won't solve anything. I stack my sticking head on top of my straight cutter so changing from sticking to straight is just a matter of banging it to a number on the spindle height counter.

[Warren Lake]

yes

one with four wheels so I could remove a wheel to stagger a cutter on one side, one with a track feed on the other side which fed raised panel end grain very nicely. only one on that shaper now, the wheel feeder got moved. Im still not sure which side I prefer a feeder mount to be on but think I prefer left side.