# Planer Leaving Tracks



## elks (Sep 16, 2010)

Guys,

As many know I am learning as I go with my wood shop. I have recently fired up the joiner and planner in the shop. Joiner works great. We are having an issue with the planner. It is a Powermatic model 180, 

The problem is that when we are using the planer the feed roll are leaving tracks in the wood. This sometimes happen and sometimes it does not. We recently planned some aspen and found really bad tracks,. The tracks on the Cedar we not was noticeable, but still some.

Is this common? Is it because we are trying to cut too much out at once? So far we have fixed it by sanding the tracks out. Is there something else we might do?


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## JMC'sLT30 (Oct 26, 2010)

Maybe set your knives a little further out from your spindle (probably wrong name but hope you know what I mean). That is to take i little more meat at a time, I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.


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## kjhart0133 (Feb 4, 2009)

The fact that you are seeing the imprint of the feed roller means that it's the output feed roller that's doing it. There should be a tension adjustment that you can change. Is the imprint all the way across the plank? If only on one side then the roller needs to be adjusted parallel to the bed and blades.

If the marks are slight, they can just be sanded off. Remember, the planer is designed to remove material, not give a 'finished' surface. A few light roller marks are not too worrisome.

Kevin H.


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## sketel (Sep 15, 2010)

I agree with the above post to a point. On such a substantial machine as a pm 180, you should be able to get pretty clean passes. Like has been suggested, tune it up and if it still is causing substantial roller marks you might have to replace the out-feed roller. It might have a flat spot or something.


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## JMC'sLT30 (Oct 26, 2010)

I could be wrong about other machines but my 20" powermatic only has teeth on the infeed side. That was the reasoning for my suggestion.:icon_confused:


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## elks (Sep 16, 2010)

It definitiely has teeth only on the in side. I have 2 options after looking at it. Moving the knives or it appears that I can move the the feeder rail up and down a bit. I am thinking I can just adjust the feeder up about a 1/16-1/8 of an inch and be good. 

Also the tracks left and pretty easy to sand out with a little effort, just like to do things right and not create more work.


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## Mizer (Mar 11, 2010)

I recently bought an old PM model 16. I had to repair a few things and basically had the thing all apart (this is a carry over from my childhood days). I found this video about setting up a planer. I made the two gauge tools that he uses and took the better part of half a day to set it up.
I must say that it surpassed my expectations, If you are having issues you might want to start from scratch and give it a good tune up. I know that at one point in the video he cautions about having the knives set out to far from the head. So you might want to consider that before you just start making changes without checking the rest of the set up.http://http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-572604587960322121#docid=-986589700074242027


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## JMC'sLT30 (Oct 26, 2010)

Mizer Thanks a lot for that great video, very enlightening.:thumbsup:


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