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Thread: Need help from the shaper guru's

  1. #16
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    Is that honeycomb checking I see Jeff? If so, that really isn’t helping your situation.
    Looks like your “eating that bull one bite at a time”
    One BIG bite!

  2. #17
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    Yeah so what your looking at are the pieces after they've been ripped in half. So the flooring as it comes is basically a 7' long core with 3/16" thick 7" square end grain blocks glued on to it. The end user doesn't want the "square" look, so they requested a rectangular, (think subway tile), look.... and that's where I come in

  3. #18
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    I dont have any time on a shaper, but I do cutting in this context. Is it only chipping out at the end of the run or throughout?

    If you can somehow score it or saw cut it first you'll significantly reduce the amount of chipping. Leave just a touch needing removal, like .010".

    I tend to avoid making knife marks except as a last resort but they do greatly reduce chipping out, if you knife the backside of those cuts with a gauge it will cut down on the chipping out. If I have something that is a real bear, I'll knife in the entire cut to the point where the cutter is just removing the knife line as it passes. I dont know if that will be the ticket on this end grain cutout but that would be my go-to if scoring were too much trouble.
    Bumbling forward into the unknown.

  4. #19
    Brian, did you read the part where he has 25,000lf of flooring to do? That's a lot of hand scoring!
    What fascinates me is how that flooring was made in the first place, and what a bad idea! Perhaps the wood had higher moisture content when fabricated & has now dried out & is under tension.
    As you can see, even the ripping process caused chipping on that one piece in the picture, which indicates even climb cutting wouldn't help. those wood fibers are just too fragile. At this point, I dont think a 3' diameter cutter would help. I hope you prove me wrong!
    Would increasing moisture content help? How about pre-finishing the flooring, or applying a seal coat? Just throwing ideas out there...
    Last edited by joe milana; 05-10-2019 at 9:54 AM.

  5. #20
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    The difference between the top and bottom cut is about 1/32", the cut being heavier on the bottom of course. If you were to use adjustable groover reversed you could easily have the set of cutters for the top ground down that much and still clear the head. I'm on the prowl for a set of 200mm groovers that I can reverse for this purpose. Have been doing a lot of shaker cabinets and the smaller diameter cutters are creating too much waste.

    Another thought, may be crap, but what about using an adjustable groover to cut the tung in two passes in the vertical before it is ripped in half? That way the nickers would maybe stop the tearout. Probably a dumb idea, I have lots of failure on my way to brilliance.Gotta get back to work.........

  6. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by joe milana View Post
    Brian, did you read the part where he has 25,000lf of flooring to do? That's a lot of hand scoring!
    What fascinates me is how that flooring was made in the first place, and what a bad idea! Perhaps the wood had higher moisture content when fabricated & has now dried out & is under tension.
    As you can see, even the ripping process caused chipping on that one piece in the picture, which indicates even climb cutting wouldn't help. those wood fibers are just too fragile. At this point, I dont think a 3' diameter cutter would help. I hope you prove me wrong!
    Would increasing moisture content help? How about pre-finishing the flooring, or applying a seal coat? Just throwing ideas out there...
    Point isn’t to hand score every board, it’s to learn if it solves the problem. If it does then you can use a machine oriented version of that addition to the process like the nicker cutters Larry mentions.
    Bumbling forward into the unknown.

  7. #22
    I know little but I know when I’m having a hard time running a groove on the sharper “tear out” amazing gauge normally solves everything.

    Well the marking gauge and dialing in the spindle speed.

    25,000 life is a pile to mark but you know if t worked I’d rather spend a day scribing lines than days fighting with tear out and or destroying expensive material.

    Infinitely variable speed can be very helpful in this case.

    At the moment I’m working with flat dawn white oak and my sticks have been suffering quite a bit of chipping. So far no big deal as it’s only happening on the back of the panel side on panels that will get laminated/glued/screwed prefinished plywood. But man of man nothing can be more aggravating than tear out when doing stain grade work and your thing to cut stiles and rails so forth and so on out of the same board and your machine keeps eating pieces.

    I didn’t look at how deep your cuts are. Well I did but I forget. I’d score your cut lines. Get adjustable groovers with nickers and give that a try.

    I have a two rangate adjustable groovers you are welcome to borrow if you give them back with new knives. Pretty sure they would be perfect for this project.

  8. #23
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    Thanks guys, I do appreciate all the suggestions. I will say that adding another operation is not an option, 25,000 lf sounds like a lot of material when you think about it for a second or two, but when you realize even adding a minute per piece will result in additional days of work.... you realize it's really a LOT of material, I just can't go down that path. Any additional handling adds enormous time at these numbers, heck I'm having to measure width to the thousand of an inch as the difference between 1/16" of width over the size of the project would be roughly 150 sf. on material that runs $10 sf.... it adds up quick! So any practical solution, (if there is one), has to be in a different type of cutter or head or?

    Larry and Patrick, the adjustable groovers won't work either. One side of the tongue is tapered and so you'd still need a custom knife to keep the side of the cut square while the face of the tongue is tapered.

    I though about upping spindle speed but the only higher speed I have is 10,000 rpms, and at that speed I'm not sure i could keep up with the feed rate? I think the pieces would be shooting out just to fast.

    Joe, no one outside the factory knows how the flooring is made. The company I'm working for does end grain flooring and thats all they do. I don't know if they're the only game in town, but I do know they put floors in all over the country and I believe a lot of it is commercial... hotels, restaurants, corporate offices etc. I was told when the owner went to Germany to visit their offices they wouldn't even let him look in the factory. They consider their process to be their "secret sauce" and are not going to let anyone in on the methods.

    With end grain there's always going to be some chipping and even on the solid block floors they put down there are gaps and imperfections that need to be filled. My goal is to minimize the chips to the extent I can. I'm bringing the first 2 sets of tongue cutters back for sharpening on Monday and will talk with the guys about possible different hook angles or other options. Having gotten input from you guys and from my own experience I think the only practical solution at this point is to just sharpen the knives more frequently, and likely have another set of tongue cutters ground as they dull much quicker than the groove.

    thanks again!
    Jeff

  9. #24
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    Not sure what the timeline on this project looks like, but my insert cope heads are 2+2 alternating shear to give clean cuts on normally-oriented end grain. Not sure if this would translate to what you've got going on. But lead time and cost might be a no-go. As for regular insert heads, I've been impressed with Great Lakes universal heads. The backers install semi-permanently and the inserts I've used have very good tolerances. Their turn around time is 5-10 days.
    JR

  10. #25
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    Thanks JR, I have until the end of the month, but hoping to get them out sooner than that. I think if I were to do it again I'd maybe try the Schmidt 3 knife T&G insert heads. I'd have to be comfortable that they could do the fit the way I need it done, but at least that way I could order a pile of inserts and just swap them out when they started getting bad. After having thought about the whole process and the way I need the parts fit, I think it's too late in the game to change things up.

    Jeff

  11. #26
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    Well it's done, came in under what I estimated at just about 24,070 lf all said and done when I hit the square foot target. Ended up using 3 sets of carbide knives for each profile, and probably really should have used a fourth on the tongue as the last thousand feet or so started to show the wear. Client was happy though, the chipping wasn't terrible and I got them a much better yield then the previous shop. I don't know that I'd ever do this type of job again but if so I think a custom ground insert head would be the way to go. The setups for each knife change getting the proper fit were a major pain, especially after sharpening when the knives had to be offset anywhere between .004 and .009 to get the fit right. Having the ability to just swap inserts would have saved a few hours of time.

    One weird thing I haven't experienced before.... but then I don't usually run anything that needs to fit so accurately. In this case the fit needed to be dead on. I did occasional spot checks through running the flooring and noticed that after a bit of time the fit would creep, maybe a couple thousands at most. I'd tweak it and it would stay fine for the rest of the batch. I'm fairly confident the spindle wasn't moving at all, most of this was run through the T-160 which is a stout machine. I'm wondering though if the heat generated in the spindle, (got pretty warm running for hours), would have been enough to cause the cut to be off a couple thousands? Anyone else ever notice something like this?

    JeffD

  12. #27
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    I have noticed this on long runs of thin T&G, but never thought about spindle getting hot. Shaper is massive as well. I guess keeping the cutter low on the spindle would negate some of the change, I was stacking male/female on the same spindle. Hmmm......

  13. #28
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    Yeah I'm not sure what would cause it.... I'm just not smart enough to figure it out I guess?! I did think at first, (well really second after I made sure the spindle height was locked), maybe it was when the micro edge of the knife wore off, but the fit of the pieces doesn't change.... so probably not that. I know metals expand and contract with temperature changes, just not sure how much expansion over the length of the spindle?

    I had my cutter head mounted about 1" off the bottom of the spindle, I prefer them up a bit as it's easier to raise the cutter up high enough that I can use the dial caliper to do final adjustments of the knives. When the head is completely bottomed I can't get it high enough to tighten the set screws.

    Jeff

  14. #29
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    Update! Figure this info may help anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation.

    So I got the call for another 3k square feet of this product and this time I took a different approach. I ordered custom T&G heads from Schmidt with carbide knives. I'm in the middle of the run and I can't believe I hesitated doing this before! Like night and day difference. Everything is ground darned near perfect and the way the knives are set I can still adjust them for fit, but far more accurately than corrugated. I can swap out a new set without any adjustments. Plus being designed this way I can swap the heads from tongue to groove cut without any height adjustment! I'm running a much faster feed rate, getting less chipping, and will actually spend less $ on the tooling than I did for the knives plus sharpening last time! I milled about 500 sq. ft. in less than an hour this afternoon. I'm a very happy camper

    JeffD
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