Hi all,
I bought myself a Christmas present a year ago - a Jet 16-32 drum sander. My first test runs were great, beautiful flat sanding, ready for 220 ROS and finish. But then I tried sanding larger panels and kept running into problem after problem. Snipe on leading or trailing edge - or both. OK, so I leave everything long and cut it to length.
Then I got gouging in one spot when it would stop feeding into the machine and I could either push/pull until the whole thing could fall over and it wouldn't feed any better. OK, try taking less bite, slow the feed rate down - nothing helped.
And then the ripples - inconsistent feed rate. fine.

My diagnosis is operator error. But me being the stubborn type, I blamed the arrows anyway.
I have tried changing feed rates, using infeed/outfeed rollers, applied lots or little upward pressure while feeding boards, tightened the feed belt, tightened and loosened the rollers... And so far I have had consistently inconsistent (bad) results.

I have the paper tight and touching. There is one bit at the end that would constantly loosen up and double over near the infamous clip. Could that small issue cause the whole big problem??

Clueless in upstate NY.... I am ready to sell that danged thing since it has caused more headaches than happiness.

Any help will be appreciated.