Matt Culik
01-16-2022, 10:18 PM
I just bought an older (1994, I believe) Powermatic Model 15 planer. This is the first planer I've owned. The seller demoed it for me before I bought it. It works, but needs some basic TLC (cleaning, tune up and knives).
I took the covers off and was exploring the machine earlier today and noticed something strange (to me, at least). When I moved the belts by hand to look at the knives, the roller drive chains on the other side didn't appear to move. I haven't touched the gear selector other than to make sure it was pushed in. I'm not able to run the machine in my shop yet because I haven't had time to get the right plug, so I haven't been able to turn it on to check it.
Is this normal? Things going through my head:
- The machine got bumped into neutral on the ride home, and even though I pushed the gear selector in (it didn't move), it's still in neutral because things need to be turning for it to go back into gear
- The gearing is so low between the cutterhead and the feed rollers that it probably was moving and just didn't look like it because I was turning the cutterhead so slowly by hand
- The gearbox is some kind of spring or pressure driven unit (like a centrifugal clutch) that needs high cutterhead speed in order to engage
- It's broken
- I'm an idiot
Anyone know how these gearbox internals are set up? Picture in the manual wasn't much help, although I didn't see any springs or clutches, so I'm thinking it's direct drive off the cutterhead.
Thanks in advance!
I took the covers off and was exploring the machine earlier today and noticed something strange (to me, at least). When I moved the belts by hand to look at the knives, the roller drive chains on the other side didn't appear to move. I haven't touched the gear selector other than to make sure it was pushed in. I'm not able to run the machine in my shop yet because I haven't had time to get the right plug, so I haven't been able to turn it on to check it.
Is this normal? Things going through my head:
- The machine got bumped into neutral on the ride home, and even though I pushed the gear selector in (it didn't move), it's still in neutral because things need to be turning for it to go back into gear
- The gearing is so low between the cutterhead and the feed rollers that it probably was moving and just didn't look like it because I was turning the cutterhead so slowly by hand
- The gearbox is some kind of spring or pressure driven unit (like a centrifugal clutch) that needs high cutterhead speed in order to engage
- It's broken
- I'm an idiot
Anyone know how these gearbox internals are set up? Picture in the manual wasn't much help, although I didn't see any springs or clutches, so I'm thinking it's direct drive off the cutterhead.
Thanks in advance!