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Hesh i seen in a recent post you have the Performax 10-20. I just bought one from woodcraft and set it up today. Worked great out of the box. Do you use yours to bring the backs, sides and tops to their final thickness or do you plane before using. If so what grit belt would be best for this. It came with a 80 grit. I would like to use this to bypass the hand planing. A friend let me experiment on a top he's using for a repair job. It worked fine but took a million passes. Well not a million but a lot. The top was about 4.5 mil and i took it to 2.9 to match the old top and leave room for final sanding. Thanks Mike

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Guitars, guitars and more guitars.

Hi Mike - congrats on your new Performax.

I use mine for all my thickness sanding and do not use a plane at all.  These machines work fine provided that you take small passes (I know it take longer but put on some tunes on the Ipod and use noise canceling plugs if you have them).  I rarely will turn the handle more then 1/8th of a turn at once.

For hard woods use the 80 grit and get some 120 for soft woods.  Also, these machines do go through belts so perhaps get something to clean your belts with.  Others have talked about a liquid that you soak the belts in and hopefully someone will weigh-in here and tell us what we need to get and from whom?

What really helps to extend the life of the belts is doing all that you can to keep the drum cooler.  This means good, strong dust collection, small passes, and cleaning the machine in between uses.

Many people, including me, report that the feed belt wants to track all the way to the right and stay there.  It seems to work fine however so I just leave mine where it wants to go on its own.

Some have reported a very slight ridge in the sanded surfaces from the outboard end of the drums when using two pass sanding (a joined top or back for example).  My machine does not have this issue and I believe it is because the feed belt is off center, on the right side, and not under the out board end of the drum.  So occasionally an irritant in a product can work to your advantage.

It's also not all that easy to install the belts however it does get easier after you do it a few times.  Try to leave some space, 1/16" or so, between the winds of the belts when installing them.  The take up spring will tighten the belt when released and needs the gaps in the belt so that the belt will move as it is tightened.

I have built about 10 guitars since I bought mine and it works fine - no issues here.

Oh, lastly, the on board circuit breaker trips rather easily and is annoying but the work around is to not over load the machine and to plug it into a circuit in your shop that does not have a great load on it already.

I hope this helps buddy.

Thanks for the response. I have used a sanding belt cleaner on my disk sander and belt sander. I wonder if it will work on this? You rub it on the moving belt. Works fine on the belt sander. Thanks Hesh.       

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Guitars, guitars and more guitars.

I'll second the oven cleaner.

I think it was Tim McKnight that posted about the Pam oven cleaner a little while back.

I took a couple of my worst belts outside and sprayed them down and like Todd said, wait a little while and then rinse it off with the water hose. Also a nylon brush as I think Tim reccomended worked great to scrub it down for the really bad belts.

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Thanks,
Blain

http://www.ullrichguitar.com

"89.67% of all statistics are made up on the spot."

On saturday I put some time into shaping mine up since I purchased it
used a week ago and really wanted to use my new vacuum.

I used a belt cleaner like the one you posted to clean the sandinging belt.
It was tricky to figure out how to hold it against the drum but I figured it
out. It worked like a champ.

The drum was completely filled with dust like Hesh mentioned. I used the
tool they give you to hold the paper tensioning spring as a hook and
raked as much out into the vac as I could.

I was also able to get my conveyor belt tracking! I used a dial caliper to
get the center of the roller equal distances from the sander's frame, then
ran the belt on high, watching and adjusting with the wrenches. It took a
few minutes, but after it seemed like it was tracked well, I measured the
gap on one side with the dial caliper and let it run for about five more
minutes. The gap was the same when I measured again.

James I have done very much the same procedure as you on the belt and then ran it and watched it and it was fine.  Then....... you put a top through it and off it goes to the right side again....... 

I hope this does not happen to ya buddy but after a bunch of tries here I just let the feed belt be free to live where it will.

We'll see. It was fun to work with if nothing else. I ran about ten passes
through it with brace stock and it worked out well.