First Impressions of a Terminus CutterHead.

[Chris Rosenberger]

For the last 1 1/2 years I have been trying to decide what type of replacement cutterhead to get for my Powermatic 180 planer. I was wanting something that would give reduced tearout & easy knife changes. After the first of the year I decided it was time to get one. I called Byrd. They were at least 10 weeks out & the cost with new bearings & delivery was over $2,200. I decided to wait a few days before ordering. Before I made a decision on the Byrd head I ran across the Terminus web site.
Terminus has a closeout deal on heads for the Powermatic 180 planer for $595. I called Terminus & the total cost with new bearings & delivery was $750. Extra 18" double edge knives are $48 each. The knives can be resharpened 1 time by Terminus for 1/2 the cost of new knives.
I did some online research on the Terminus & found some very good reviews & nothing negitive. Some had said they had expereinced reduced tearout. Reduced tearout was why I was looking at the Byrd head. I decided to order the Terminus.

For those that are not familar with the Terminus head. It is a quick change straight knife, indexed cutterhead. Each knife has 2 edges. Tersa is another brand of this type of cutterhead.
http://www.terminus-stl.com/indexMain.html

The head arrived early last week & I installed it. The installation went very well, about 2 hours including feed roll adjustments.

The first thing I noticed when I started the planer was that the noise level was alot lower. The stock cutterhead has large openings in front of the gibs. These openings cause a loud roar when the planer is running. The Termninus head does not have any openings, just the blades protruding slightly above the head. The noise level was also lower when planing lumber also. The planed surface was very good. I ran boards with & against the grain, ran curly wood, ran knots & took deep cuts. The only tearout was around one knot & it was very small.

I did discovered one thing that I did not know before I purchased the head. That is that the wood chips are alot thinner & lighter. This means that my dust collector fills up quicker because the chips are fluffy. The barrels are lighter to empty but need to be empited more often.

Overall I am very happy with the Terminus planer head & glad I bought it.

[fRED mCnEILL]

I'm somewhat confused as to WHY there would be less tearout with this setup vs the regular blade as both are straight blades. Isd the nagle different?

Anyone have an explaination for this?

Thanks

Fred Mc.

[John Miliunas]

Yup, I agree with Fred. It seems to me that the method of material removal is consistent with either system. If there's other reasoning (outside of a brand new, fresh blade) that it should be so, I'd be real interested, as I'm not entirely happy with the stock cutter assembly on my 15"-er. Thanks! :) :cool:

[tod evans]

not knowing the geometry of either head my initial impression is that the cutting angle is different....02 tod

[Jeff Singleton]

I have a Terminus head in my 180 PM and it works great except on very dry maple. The idea behind the head is simple but usually not explained. If you make a head where the knives only protrud a couple thousands past the cutterhead diameter and make them indexed so every knife has the exact same cutting diameter and the entire gib,knife area is filled you get a very quiet head that cuts great. You can get a cut that is almost equal with a grinder but the time it takes to get that cuts is a lot greater and hard to duplicate over and over. One of the bueaties of the Terminus is that you can put shorter knives in the head and have 3 knives pure row instead of 1. If you put in a 100 mm, 200m, and 260mm I think, you can stagger the knives so the joints are not in line. If you get a knick and who doesn't you just rearnge one row and your back to a clean cut. It takes longer to get my dust hood off then to rearange the kinves. You can get the knives sharpened one time and Terminus does it on the back side opposite the bevel. They grind a little mark at one end to let you know it was reground. They only take 5 thousands or something like that off when they grinder so they can not take a big knick out that a nail, staple or screw leaves. I paid the $740 for mine and it is worth it.

Jeff Singleton:)
Singleton's Woodworking & Pattern Works