Choosing the right moulder planer, or other options

[J.R. Rutter]

The tax benefits potentially offset some of the initial purchase, depending on income. If you have a great year and the accountant says you will be owing taxes unless you buy some equipment, it is like knocking that amount off of the purchase price. Otherwise, Jeff has a valid point as long as you have good suppliers. Good dust collection will always be needed though.

[Jim Andrew]

I had a 718 Woodmaster, it will make molding, but very slow. And it will not make the 3rd roundover without the router add on. As for speed, it is probably about right with the router doing part of the work. They are not commercial built machines, but a light weight homeowner machine, although some guys do make molding with them, most that do wind up with at least 2 machines.

[Peter Quinn]

My guess is if you go SLR and 4 sided molder you will have to be running closer to 20,000 LF per week to start making sense of that investment. You need to keep that molder busy, and it won't be even close to capacity at 1500-3000lf per week. I like the out sourcing, but sometimes there is value to being able to run what you need when you need it and not having installers idle waiting for a sub who may not think your 1500 LF of molding is his top priority on a give day. You can definetly get a cutter stack to form a bullnose with two heads, try freeborn, Schmidt in NJ, ask whoever you use know what stock options they have available. You will need one up/one down, inserts would better as one head will get dull 50% faster running that last edge and keeping 3 wing braised tooling matched over multiple sharpenings can get tricky. Unless other aspects of your business plan suggest it's time to vastly increase capacity, I'm thinking one good industrial shaper does this job in a cost effective manner and timely fashion if you organize your stock handling well. Forget any set up that involves routers, it's moving sideways not forward.

[Carter Forbes]

We make 9 level four sided gondola shelving. Each unit uses 180 lf. If these go into large production and they will, I have to be faster. I agree that 10k is a lot but if I can knock out 100 per month, it may be worth it. We are supplying over 200 stores with roughly 16 units each, and wine racks, and custom sunglass racks. I am ok with simply cutting cost of routing in half, but more important is eliminating most of sanding that hand routing requires.

[Carter Forbes]

I think a shaper is well within my budget even with a stock feeder. This gig needs to make money now not five yrs down the road.

[J.R. Rutter]

And you will always find a use for a good shaper/feeder. For me the moulder came after many years of outsourcing and tedious in-house milling. So the labor savings were a huge factor as well. Sounds like the shaper/tooling/feeder will be a good solution.

What I used to do with shapers was install a digital height gauge and leave a stack of heads on. Write down the settings and just crank the spindle up and down as needed. Faster than changing cutters because you don't have to move any fences or dust shrouds. I used ProScales. On this shaper, I used panel mounts because they fit in the factory cutout.

For sticking, which is similar to what you need to do, I have a piece of aluminum bolted to the front portion of the shaper table with UHMW tape strip on the face to prevent rub marks on the wood. This old pic was pre-aluminum, and we used spacers against the fence to set different widths. Also some low tech springs on the fance to help hold wood against the front fence.

[Jeff Duncan]

I would advise reading Peter's post a couple times as I believe he is spot on. If you want to do this yourself buying your stock pre-milled and ripped to width, and then run through an industrial shaper with custom cutters is a pretty easily achieved upgrade. The key is buying a good shaper, not a light duty Delta or some Asian clone. A good shaper will all but eliminate your sanding. The good news is there's a lot of used industrial shapers sitting on the market with no buyers. I'm not quite sure why, but they're not moving and good deals can be had.

If you want to rip your stock down as well then you'll probably want to upgrade your table saw and add a feeder as well. Not sure if the quantity really justifies an SLR or not, (guessing not), but you'll have to crunch some numbers on that one.

So if my math is right your expecting 2-1/2 - 3 years of steady work just from this single profile? If so and you have them priced correctly you should be able to make a decent investment in tooling to improve your production. Running them with any configuration involving routers is just not practical or economical.

good luck,
Jeffd

[Carter Forbes]

Looks like a nice set up. Like idea of stacking cutter heads. The uhmw would reduce drag too I'm sure.

[Carter Forbes]

Your math is correct. Pricing is good. I charge a price that would bury me on a single unit, but on 8-12 (my minimum and average), I make good money. Customer doesn't mind helping with machinery either. He plans to supply these "free" as part of a franchise package and get monthly royalties. The faster I produce, the better it is for both of us. He makes money on his investment, I get paid per unit, and I get some dividend for designing.

[Carter Forbes]

I've seen used shapers on IRSAuctions.com pretty cheap. I will guess that my next battle will be the tooling for it.

[Peter Quinn]

I've seen used shapers on IRSAuctions.com pretty cheap. I will guess that my next battle will be the tooling for it.

Not a battle on tooling, pretty stAndard operation, might prove cheaper to buy an insert half round and an insert quarter round than a double stack, consider both options, change over should be less than 5 minutes if diAmeters are same and quarter round runs from below.

[Carter Forbes]

When these hit production, a used SLR will be on the agenda for sure. For now, a shaper, feeder, and upgrading the DC is perfect and will leave room for an edge bander.

[J.R. Rutter]

If you get custom tooling, design them so that there is no "hard" shoulder to leave a line on slightly oversized stock and make height more forgiving. Just ask them to extend the cutter slightly at a low angle instead of 90 degrees. 2 degrees off would be fine. I highlighted your drawing to show where I'm talking about.

[Mel Fulks]

Insist the knives are made with "5 degrees side clearance " without it you will start to get a little burning near the tangent
point long before the knives are dull. "Insist" is the right word as I have spect that in writing and a couple of times still
not gotten it.

[Carter Forbes]

Thank you for mentioning that. I had planned to use a 17/32 bullnose but leaving it a few degrees out is a great idea. May do both.