I love my Hammer A3-31 with a passion. The finish the spiral cutter head produces is as close to perfect as I'll ever need, the digital readout for the planer is extremely convent, always spot on and snipe has been dialed away to a distant memory. That said, I hate my A3-31 with a passion and would gladly throw, or wheel it with my mobility kit, to the 9th plane of a smoldering inferno. The problems I detail below are indeed unique and best as I can tell not indicative of the A3-31. So many people own and use these machines with great success and I was one of them. It was a great machine right up to the point it wasn't.
For context, back in March I damaged my machine, my fault for working too late in the day and, in a fatigued state, failed to recognize I'd fed a tapered board into the planer. This jammed the infeed roller, sheared off gears and damaged the infeed roller, drive chain and gears. After posting my woeful tale here on SMC, and getting some advice, I decided to take the plunge and repair it myself. $200 in parts and some great phone support from several Felder techs got the job done and it really wasn't that bad. Happy, I proceeded to calibrate the planer first and it was a breeze, sort of, took a bit of time but got it all to within .0001 and boards were coming out like glass.
Unfortunately when I turned my attention to the jointer beds I found myself struggling, lacking in patience or skill, or both as I just couldn't get the darn things coplanar. I read every article I could find, spoke to tech support a dozen times, read the manual, supplemental PDFs and even phoned a friend all to no avail. After days and days of adjusting this bolt and that bolt I thew in the towel and booked a service appointment to have a tech come out and get my beloved machine back to spec. Having a tech come from Felder is no cheap undertaking but I was fortunate that they're relatively close but still it was very expensive. Alas, I broke it and really loved this machine and looked at it as an investment to getting it back to perfect condition.
Now here is where things got worse, not better... (insert mad face here). The technician from Felder came out and five hours later, decreed I was back in business. Several test boards confirmed the beds were aligned and snipe free. Great! Or so I thought... After a three week heat wave I finally got back in the garage for some woodworking nirvana. Upon edge jointed some shorter walnut boards I notice a distinct concave bow was being induced into the edge of the board... To make a "very" long story somewhat short... I measured the tables and found they were completely out of alignment... Infeed was drooping down by almost a 1/4 of an inch and outfield was not parallel to the cutter block... I was deeply concerned to put it mildly and upon further investigation found the locking bolts for the infeed table hinge had not been tightened down and one of the outfeed operator side castle nuts was also loose. Uggggg.
Back on the phone with Felder and they agreed to send the tech back and get things squared away, very sorry and all that. So the tech came back and this time it took six hours to get the tables aligned... While six hours seemed like a long time, he really did put in some work and I was grateful for his dedication to getting things back in shape. Well he again declared his work finished and we ran a grip of bards thru, all different species and lengths and what do you know, Good To Go! All flat and looking like they should. I was a very happy camper. That feeling lasted all of six days.
The very next weekend I finally had some free time so I went in to the shop, and for the first time since the repairs, fired up my good as new A3-31 and crap, WTF, are you kidding me??? The EXACT same concave bow was being induced. I couldn't believe it! Still can't believe it. Having no idea what could possible be going on, and vowing to sell this cursed machine, I called tech support yet again, spoke to a different guy this time, and he gave me some tips to check the machine and re calibrate it, myself... So I started looking everything over and first checked all the bolts again to see if any were loose, all good but I noticed this on the infeed table hinge locking bolts...
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As best as I can tell, the bolts have moved down from their original position revealing the bare metal beneath. Having no idea what would cause that or what it would mean to the set up of the infeed table hinge, I looked further and found the final straw that killed my love with this particular machine.
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That is the 1/4 inch steel case frame for the machine itself and it's bent!!! The ruler should be sitting flush with the case its resting against but as you can see the frame has been bent inward where the hinge mechanism sits on the frame! I did confirm that section should be flush along its length with the outfield side, no pics as the dust hood gets in the way.
How the heck does the steel frame of this machine get bent like that??? If it was damaged before the tech showed up, either time, I would think he'd say, "Hey buddy, info only, your machine is bent". I will say, it did work when he was here but yet again, now it doesn't.
So after seven months of dealing with this machine, I'm done. Given all the real stressors we're all dealing with in the world, this is a rather small problem but I have to say, I'm tired of dealing with stress from this machine, I'm sick of talking to Felder support, I don't want tech guy back at my house, I doubt that damage could even be fixed and at this point, wouldn't trust it even if it was. Seeing as the machine is 3 years old, I'm sure Felder won't be receptive to a replacement and at this point I just don't feel like battling them for some type of fix or compensation. As almost every owner of this machine will tell you they are great and work really well, my only advise, don't break yours. Getting it fixed may be a wee bit of a problem.
Ultimately I am now the proud owner of a $5500 + $1000 repaired machine that I'm pretty sure is the most expensive, stand alone 12" thickness planer in the country. 2020 sucks...
Unless someone else has any insight or thoughts, I'm thinking of just pulling the tables off completely and using it as a pricey planer and getting a stand alone jointer. Or, so I'm not reminded of the problems with it, just dumping the thing completely and settling for new separate machines... Did I mention 2020 sucks?
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