I thought I'd write some notes about my experience with the new (2014 model) Felder AD 741 jointer-planer combination machine. There wasn't a huge amount of up-to-date information available on the internet when I bought the machine, so here are some things I learned. I'm writing about the new generation machine, the one that looks like a square gray box below the jointer tables.
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I have what seems to be the standard north American configuration: with the SilentPower helical cutterhead, the 3kW (approx. 4HP) single phase motor, and the power drive electronic thickness adjustment. I've used a lot of jointers and planers, and this machine is easily among the best. The machining on the surfaces is excellent, the jointer tables move freely and accurately, and the whole thing is rock solid. Having the 16" jointing width is terrific. With the helical cutterhead it is also astonishingly quiet. I generally don't feel the need to use hearing protection with it, which is amazing. I'm usually the first to grab my ear protectors, but it doesn't even drown out my stereo at medium volume. I'd say it's quite a bit quieter (even when chewing up a wide board) than my Ridgid shop vac. When you turn on the Felder (make sure to hold the start button until it reaches full speed, because a 1 phase machine requires a capacitor boost to start), it comes up to speed almost instantly with a light buzzing sound. There's no detectable vibration.
The helical cutterhead is, as I've said, fantastic. It's quiet and leaves a beautiful surface, and takes less power to run than straight knives. Although there are motor options up to 10 hp in the 3 phase configurations, I have yet to encounter any situation where the standard motor seems to strain even a little. Supposedly you can take up to 4mm of stock off on a single pass, if you really want to. I haven't had the urge to find out if it can really do that. But something a little more reasonable, like taking off 1/16" of hard maple on a 12" wide board? No problem. And the shearing cut from those sharp carbide blades allows you to plane highly figured wood with nearly no tearout.
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The machine comes fully-assembled, except for the fence, packed on a 1200 x 2100mm pallet. That is a big footprint. It just fits on the liftgate of a semi-trailer delivery truck, and we wound up using two pallet jacks side by side to move it. At about 1200 lbs, there's a lot of mass to move around. This is at least a three person job. I thought it would come in an enclosed box, but it was just wrapped in plastic with some 2x4 uprights nailed to the pallet. Once it's in your shop, you have to get it off the pallet and into position. I skipped the $500 rolling carriage, figuring that I would never move the machine again. To get it off the pallet, you're going to have to lift it from above (unless you can get an engine hoist under the pallet stringers. I don't think that would work, but I didn't try). You can rig a sling easily enough - the machine has a wide slot running side to side underneath, so you can run some webbing through there and bring it up above the tables. Obviously you don't lift it by its tables. I wound up building a frame a little wider than the pallet and using a chain hoist to lift the machine off. I then slid the pallet away and put a dolly underneath. I rolled the dolly into position, moved the frame, lifted the machine off the dolly and set it down on the floor. If you happen to have a forklift or a crane, this will all be easier for you.
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Yes, that is half a ton of machine hanging by some webbing.
The machine does come with bolts that you can thread into the back to help you move it with a pallet jack. That won't help you get it off the pallet, but if it's already on the floor, you could probably move it around this way. Well, maybe you could build a ramp, and roll it down with the jack, but we're talking 1200 lbs here, and that's too scary for me. The bolts stick out a couple of inches on the back side. The idea is that one prong of the jack goes under the bolts, and the other goes in that wide slot under the machine. This seems sketchy to me, but the people at Felder must believe it would work. I guess you'd only lift the thing half an inch off the the ground using this method, so maybe it's safe enough. Try it if you dare.
My machine arrived in good adjustment. The planer tables were coplanar, and the outfeed table was exactly at the height of the blades. If you need to move the outfeed table, you'll find that the handle that moves it appears to be locked in place. The manual doesn't say, but your helpful Felder tech support rep will tell you that there is in fact a locking bolt that needs to be loosened before you can adjust it, and they will even send you a marked up diagram showing you where it is.
Another thing you won't learn from the manual: the correct operation of the two speed transmission for the planer drive rollers. There's a lever at the bottom left of the machine. You can pull it out for 6 feet/minute, or push it in for 12 feet/minute, or you can leave it in neutral. I thought that I needed to shift it into neutral before switching back to jointer mode, but in fact it works just fine to leave it in gear all the time. The manual is silent on this point, but it seems to be OK. Maybe the rollers are spinning away under the tables? Another Felder owner (see below) has said that you should shift into neutral if the machine is going to be non-operational for a while, otherwise it can leave a flat spot in the rollers. I've been running the machine at the slower speed, which is plenty fast enough for me, on the theory that I'll get a cleaner surface with less strain on the machine. For furniture work, I don't really care if it takes 5 seconds or 10 for the board to come through, but I guess if you were running thousands of board feet of something through in one batch, you might find the faster speed useful.
Switching modes is quite quick. To turn it into a planer, you must first slide the fence all the way forward so that the overhanging part at the back clears the pivot point of the tables. This screws up the ergonomics a little, because it means that the Euro-style blade guard is now hanging 16" off the front of the machine, which is exactly where you want to stand to lift the tables out of the way. But you get used to standing to one side and hoisting the fairly heavy tables. Then you flip over the dust collector housing, which requires a fair bit of slack in the dust collection hose. Finally, you raise the planer table into position. For jointing, it has to be about 6.5" or lower to provide clearance for the dust chute. Raising the planer table is where the power drive feature shines, and why it might be worthwhile, for this feature alone, to spring for the Felder over the equivalent Hammer. You just twist the height adjustment knob and the planer table is in position in a few seconds. There's a left/right knob to raise and lower the table quickly, and a fine adjustment button that you press to raise the table in small increments. The smallest adjustment possible is 5/1000 of an inch. There's a digital readout that tells you the current planing thickness (which you can calibrate if necessary; mine came from the factory as accurate as I could measure with electronic calipers). To go back to jointing, you lower the planer table, flip the dust chute, and lower the jointer tables back into position. Overall, it works fine, and if space is an issue in your shop, I'd say the tradeoff of a little changeover time is totally worth it. I found it easy to adjust my workflow a little to joint a bunch of stock all together, then switch over and do all the thicknessing together. The power drive feature definitely makes the switchover painless; I think it would be a lot more annoying to have to crank the table up and down every time.
Having never used a European style jointer guard, I found it took a little getting used to at first. Basically, for face jointing, you raise the guard just above the thickness of the board, and push it over to touch the fence, covering the cutterhead. The board slides underneath it; you pick up your hand, lift it over the guard, and put it down over the outfeed table. This seems at least as safe as using a pushblock over an American-style lambchop guard. For edge jointing, you lower the guard to the table, and leave just enough room between the end of the guard and the fence for the thickness of the board to pass through. This also seems pretty safe to me. The only thing I don't like is face jointing a really thick board, like 10/4 or more. You can't get the guard high enough to let the board pass underneath, so you wind up running the machine with the guard retracted and the cutterhead fully exposed. The board is thick, so you're a long way away, but at the end of each pass you're staring down at that spinning blade thinking, "Wow, I wish that was covered." Especially when you're wrestling with a 7' long, three-inch thick, 90 lb chunk of walnut. Felder offers an optional "comfort" guard; I went for the standard one, but if I were doing it all over, I'd at least take the time to figure out if the other one is better.
The only small complaint I have about the machine has to do with the fence system. The extruded aluminum fence rides on a thick steel rod at the right side of the machine. There's a little flex in the fence and mine has a tiny twist. It doesn't affect my ability to get a square edge, so I haven't done anything about it. The back of the fence has a sliding cover for the exposed part of the cutterhead behind the fence. This will obviously hang off the back of the machine by 16" when the fence is all the way at the back, so you need more clearance behind the machine than you might think. I thought about not installing the cover, but it turns out to be important for the stability of the fence. There's a locking knob that clamps the cover down, adding additional support in the middle of the fence to reduce deflection. Unfortunately, my cover just didn't fit very well where it matches the fence, and the whole mess is kind of crude and flimsy. I fooled around with it for quite a while setting up the machine before finally wrestling it into some semblance of working order. It all works OK in practice, but it's just one thing that should be so much better to match the quality of the rest of the machine. And, of course, you have to have the machine at least 16" away from the wall. But you can stack a bunch of lumber back there...
Anyway, I'm glad I spent the extra money on this machine. It is expensive, but it's really two great machines in one space-saving package. The quality is excellent and I'm sure it will provide decades of reliable service.
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