Hello all. I'm looking at both of these models as a potential planer/jointer. My primary concern is about dust collection.
The information and pictures are somewhat limited here so I am looking for people who have experience working with both of these machines.
One of the problems I see with the Hammer is how the dust hood is engineered. It's incredibly hard to see how the dust hood fits down in the videos and pictures. However, it seems like a loose area dust hood. In several videos, you can see dust/chips just sitting in the hood before they flip it over for planing mode. There is always tons of sawdust all over the hood, cutter-head and planing bed. The Jay Bates video states that dust collection on this is not perfect.
When examining pictures/videos of the Minimax FS41, you do have two separate dust hoods for planing/jointing. However, it seems like the hoods are shaped to come down right on top or along side of the cutter head with a good front/back seal (engineered specifically for each purpose of jointing or planing). It seems to me that the Minimax would provide better suction/collection of this dust under operation. I have read some comments that the Minimax dust hood gets clogged with chips frequently. I actually think this is when you use straight knives on the cutter wheel. I do remember using a 15" planer back in the day where the dust port would just get clogged with 12" long shavings all the time. This was a major pain. I plan to use a helical cutter head, so I don't think I will have problems with long shavings. I believe that the long shavings may get clogged in ports if you don't have enough suction/CFM (i.e. the weight of the long shaving would be too much for limited CFM).
If you are running 3+ HP dust collection, it may not be a problem. However, I'm currently using a Jet 1100 dust collector. With a 5" hose, I think I will realistically get about 550 CFM at the machine.
Can anyone give there experiences with these two machines here? I understand that I do have limited CFM on my dust collection right now. Would it be better to go down to a 12" machine? (I know many regret the limited 12" size).