HI guys,
I'm looking for a small timesaver, or similar widebelt sander. Our parts max out at around 12" wide. Timesaver makes a 13, if you can find one. The next are 19's, and they exist, but they're 10K used. Or..... There are a whole slew of 15-16 inch woodworking widebelt sanders. From reading other threads on here, it looks like the main difference is which way the belt rotates, relative to the infeed direction.
Our parts are mostly 1/8" aluminum, and the goal is simply an even grain, and to knock the laser slag off the cut edges.
We're getting them hand jitterbugged by the laser house now, and what with the price increases from the tariffs, (American material, damnit!) we're looking to find a way to at least hold pricing steady.
So my questions are two:
A) what's the difference? The surface speed of the belt is so much higher than the traverse speed of the feed rollers that I can't imagine the difference is more than about 5% of SFM at the work point. So why would the metal care?
B) are there any other differences between for real timesavers and the woodworking machines that justifies the roughly doubling in price?
There's a shop down the road that has a 15" open-sided woodworking sander that I've played with for metal. It'll feed our parts just fine, and seems to do a decent job. I doubt they know about the reversed direction thing, so I'm pretty sure it's still spinning in the 'wood' direction. Seems to work just fine. So why do I want to spend an extra 5-7K on a used Timesaver?
(I'm serious: what makes them worth that much more?) They all oscillate, so that's not it...
As long as I'm asking, which way's which? Metal machines spin the belt with the feed direction, or against?
Help clue me in, eh?
Thanks,
Brian
I'm looking for a small timesaver, or similar widebelt sander. Our parts max out at around 12" wide. Timesaver makes a 13, if you can find one. The next are 19's, and they exist, but they're 10K used. Or..... There are a whole slew of 15-16 inch woodworking widebelt sanders. From reading other threads on here, it looks like the main difference is which way the belt rotates, relative to the infeed direction.
Our parts are mostly 1/8" aluminum, and the goal is simply an even grain, and to knock the laser slag off the cut edges.
We're getting them hand jitterbugged by the laser house now, and what with the price increases from the tariffs, (American material, damnit!) we're looking to find a way to at least hold pricing steady.
So my questions are two:
A) what's the difference? The surface speed of the belt is so much higher than the traverse speed of the feed rollers that I can't imagine the difference is more than about 5% of SFM at the work point. So why would the metal care?
B) are there any other differences between for real timesavers and the woodworking machines that justifies the roughly doubling in price?
There's a shop down the road that has a 15" open-sided woodworking sander that I've played with for metal. It'll feed our parts just fine, and seems to do a decent job. I doubt they know about the reversed direction thing, so I'm pretty sure it's still spinning in the 'wood' direction. Seems to work just fine. So why do I want to spend an extra 5-7K on a used Timesaver?
(I'm serious: what makes them worth that much more?) They all oscillate, so that's not it...
As long as I'm asking, which way's which? Metal machines spin the belt with the feed direction, or against?
Help clue me in, eh?
Thanks,
Brian