How is Grizzly overall as a brand?

[Charles Coolidge]

Charles, I'm asking rather than telling here. The amount of power needed for one head vs the other is all I'm asking about. Felder ran tests and I'm assuming others must as well when developing a new design. Byrd heads consume more power than a straight knife and I assume some spirals will be different than the Byrd. Everyone talks about noise and finish quality, but another benefit is the smaller chip size which requires less cfm from your collector. I was merely hoping Shiraz would let us know if the Grizzly head is more or less efficient than the Byrd and what if any other benefits it might have. Dave

Well based on the image of the Felder cutter head I found vs Grizzly and Byrd it seems logical it would consume less power as there are fewer inserts in the cut at a given moment in time. This would explain to a degree the reduced noise as well. I don't know about smaller chips but the Felder seems to have a deep trough for chip evacuation. I always thought my Byrd heads produced small chips, I remember being impressed with the dust sized chips my cyclone was able to capture and keep out of the filter when I emptied it a while back.

I tried to find out what RPM the Felder cutter heads are spinning but they don't seem to list this, that's also part of the equation as is feed speed. Its entirely possible Felder has invented a superior cutter head I don't know. In metal working someone is always inventing better tooling that cuts faster lasts longer and hogs more material. Wood working is just getting its feet wet in this area by comparison, the tooling/cutter choices in metal working is vast.