Hammer A3 planer problems.

[Joshua Bass]

I have a new hammer J/P combo machine and I am having some problems with it. When planing wood, I cant get the wood to feed through consistently. Often the piece will go half way in and then slip or kick off to an angle. Any idea why this would be and what I can do to fix it? I am thinking the outfeed roller is probably a little too high and fails to fight the helix cutter head.

[Geoff Crimmins]

I would start by checking the height and alignment of the feed rollers, chip breaker, and pressure bar.

--Geoff

[Bill Orbine]

Simplest thing first.... Wax the table. And see what happens.

[Edwin Santos]

Yes, waxing the table is surprisingly important.

[Derek Cohen]

Simplest thing first.... Wax the table. And see what happens.

Ditto.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Rod Sheridan]

As others have said, wax the tables on the planer and the jointer.

If you don't want to use wax Felder sell a lubricant that you spray on before using the planer......I use wax.

Regards, Rod.

[Prashun Patel]

Dumb question alert: Have you engaged the feed roller lever at the bottom of the machine?

+100: waxing helps remarkably.

[Joshua Bass]

Simplest thing first.... Wax the table. And see what happens.
How often do I need to wax? I did put paste wax on it, but find it is hard to get a good wax job since the iron isn't milled as smooth as some of my other machines (table saw, bandsaw, etc.) The Hammer cast iron is kind of grainy.


Dumb question alert: Have you engaged the feed roller lever at the bottom of the machine?

+100: waxing helps remarkably.

Yes the feed roller lever is engaged.

[Mark Carlson]

I wax my planer bed before any big planing session.

[Edwin Santos]

Frequency of waxing kind of depends on how much planing you're doing. In my case, I wax before a big planing session, like Mark, or when I see some telltale signs that it's needed. I might go a month or two in between waxings, again it depends on how much volume your planer is seeing. Some wood species are higher friction by nature than others. White oak comes to mind.
I use good old Johnson's paste wax.

It's a great machine, I've been very happy with it. You'll find a lot of good advice here in old discussion threads.

[John Kee]

Use this product, works great, quicker and easier than waxing.

http://us.feldershop.com/en-US/en-US/en-US/Workshop/Cleaning-and-maintenance/FELDER-Super-Glide.html