What else besides Wixey for planers?

[Paul Simmel]

Alternatives?

[Steven J Corpstein]

Take a look at this for an alternative. I have both their saw and router table readouts and prefer the build quality.

http://www.digi-kit.com

[Chester Mullins]

Look for my post,
Planer depth gage.

[Mike Spanbauer]

can't see any details in your pics Chester. Wixey is the only one I've seen that comes with high recommendations consistently by users.

Affordable and effective.

mike

[Mike Goetzke]

Alternatives?

I have a Wixey on my planer and TS. On the TS it's useful but on the planer it's almost a necessity. I really like both of these products. Any reason you are looking for alternatives?

Mike

[Eric Haycraft]

I have a Wixey on my planer and TS. On the TS it's useful but on the planer it's almost a necessity. I really like both of these products. Any reason you are looking for alternatives?

Mike
The wixey only goes to 6". Many planers are 8 inches in height making the wixey a poor choice.

[Mike Spanbauer]

A poor choice for maximum usage on the unit maybe. However, I can tell you exactly how many times I've planed material thicker than 5" on one hand.. zero.

Besides, which planer do you have that possesses an 8" capability? Most 20" units are 6-7" max. If you've a unique industrial, then frankly a $70 unit is a poor choice anyway. There are several industrial digitals which run $400-$1000.

mike

[Travis Gauger]

Steven, No offense, but those Digi-Kit units are priced rediculously in my opinion. I am sure that they are of much better quality than the Wixey version, but Wow!

I have a 15" shop Fox planer and also have an 8" max height. that is why I don't have a Wixey on it. I love the wixey DRO on my tablesaw and would like to go to the planer too, but would like alternatives to compare.

The Digi-Kit unit looks real nice, but for that price I can get a DRO for a mill and put it on there. Something like a sony millman single axis DRO.

[Chester Mullins]

Mike
What you can not see in the pic is a 6" Dial Caliper
mounted to the left side of the planer.
If you want digital, simply mount a digital caliper.
I can plane lumber to within .001 and it is repeatable.

[Eric Haycraft]

Most of the Chinese 15 and 20 inch imports are 8 or 9 inches. I have a 15" grizzly and put the digi-kit on it. I don't really like it because it rezeros when I turn it off, but mine may be defective. They pulled the product in the past few weeks and the site says that they are planning on releasing a new version shortly. Due to the popularity of these newer 15" planers, I find it hard to believe that a company could ignore their capabilities anymore.

[Paul Simmel]

>>> I have a Wixey on my planer and TS. On the TS it's useful but on the planer it's almost a necessity. I really like both of these products. Any reason you are looking for alternatives?

I was just wondering what the competition was, etc. Plus I do have an 8” capacity planer, but like others, I rarely use the higher depths unless I gang up a bunch of boards for edge grain processing.

For years I have kept certain colored marks on the crank handle with corresponding marks on the planer body for repeatable, frequently used thicknesses. Not exactly “nifty”, but workable and repeatable.

Chester,

Is there any way you could update your pic’s, or explain a bit further what you did over there on the other thread? I’ve got an extra caliper and wouldn’t hesitate adapting your method if it works as well as you say.

Thanks.

[Paul Simmel]

Chester,

If you need help resizing your pic’s (from the originals) getting the file-sizes down to SMC specs, yet large enough to view, you can PM me. I can either guide you through the process depending on what software you have, or do it for you if you email me the originals.

[Grant Lasson]

Paul,

I've got the Wixey on a 12" DeWalt planer but I got a 12" vertical DRO from 800watt (seller) on eBay. I just checked and he's got some being auctioned now. I think I paid $25 plus shipping. (I think the TOS do not allow posting of eBay auctions, so I won't.)

I like these scales because they have an incremental mode and do not re-zero when I turn the scale off (other chinese DROs re-zero every time and do not have an incremental mode).

I haven't had time to install my 12" DRO on my 20" planer yet but I've used these types of scales on other machines and they work fine. You do have to fabricate brackets for them.

Grant

[Paul Simmel]

Thanks, Grant. I'm just wondering how these things get attached to a typical 4-post planer. Mine is a Grizzly G 1021. The DRO (Digital Read Out?) scale at least has brackets. I'm just curious how that caliper got attached, because I have an extra one.