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What grit paper you guys running in your oscillating edge sanders?

Trboatworks

Diamond
Joined
Oct 23, 2010
Location
Maryland- USA
I just brought a 6x103 edge sander into the shop and am buying some belts.
How are you guys setting up- as shaping machine with 80 or so or more finishing with fine?
Is there a sweet spot to get both on one grit or bracket a bit- some coarse belts & some fine?
This model has the ‘edge joining’ feature so I want to make sure it has enough balls to take a cut on solid stock.
Typical for me are skim cuts on floor panels which are planked with solid, ply, or a combination of the two.

Thanks all
 
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I don't currently have an edge sander, but at the old job I used one a decent amount. If I recall it pretty much stayed 80 grit. I used it to hog alot of material off to a line, or at angles on patterns etc. If the application needed it, I finish sanded with the Dynabrade.

Not sure how yours will work, but on the huge one we had, it would remove anything as fast as you could shove it in there, made for short work with the 0 grit, never a need for coarser.
 
Ok, thanks for that.
I am purchasing from AAAdhesives which make up the belts in packs of ten.
I have 100 grit on order and was just wondering if I should add to that with some coarser belts.
It’s been a long time since I have worked with a larger belt sander so don’t know how this will end up being used.
I do know that I will get trimming panels off the standard joiner and as mentioned above I want aggressive enough.
All the other typical uses- cleaning up bandsaw cuts etc.
I might just hold tight and see how well the 100’s work out.
 
I had to give my guys a speech about the difference between an edge sander and a bandsaw. Because the edge sander always had cooked belts because they cut so much oversize and just loaded up the 120 grit SANDING belts. Then gave them a bandsaw lesson and told them to get a job at Burger King if they can't cut half of the pencil line off. Sander when sanding belts are on it, like always. Yeah, lasted a few weeks then sanding belts got clogged again. Very skilled mad always burned stripes in the wide belt. 3 head 42" wide belt and had to school him a few times. He works elsewhere now. 42" belts are $$$ a set.
 
I have used edges sanders for years and just run 80 on it. It's good all round for timber or manufactured board. The finish is good enough to not need much finish sanding.

As for the bandsaw bandits, tell them to go cross eyed focussing on the line and the result will be perfect - if they can keep their lunch down... Cheers
 
Personally I would get some 40 grit belts as well. Belts change pretty quickly. I don't have a horizontal belt but almost every disk sander I have used has always had 36 or 40 grit. They don't tend to load up and when you are cutting thick material often you cannot cut really close to the line as the blade will wander or belly. I find coarse fairly sharp paper easier to sand to a line with as you don't have to push.

For edge jointing I would definitely use 40 grit. 2 pieces of wood flattened on a disk with 40 grit tack up when glued amazingly quickly.
 
I keep 80 and 120 grit belts for a horizontal belt sander, and rarely use the 80.
A sharp 120 removes stock so fast it's not funny.
 
I guess I'm in the minority here, but 150 grit is my fine belt and 100 or 80 my coarse belt. The 150 leaves a near lacquer ready surface- and the reason I say near is because I am making very high end furniture. When doing cabinets and such I do no more sanding after my 150. I run Klingspor belts and my sander is an Oakley 8" x 144" belt that oscillates. The 80 is great for heavy stock removal. The 100 for standard stock issues. The one caveat of the 150 belts is you do have to baby them a bit, Probably not a great choice in a production environment where there are many users who would not be changing belts frequently.
 
Pete- One of the features of the machine I am standing up is the sanding joiner which can be used for fine sanding between coats of finish- I will have to see how that works out but you might be right- I may end up needed belts on the finer side of things as well.

Are you buying aluminum oxide or?
One man shop but I still have a idiot to deal with.
There is always that stick of rebar or the like that I want to debur NOW...
 
I use standard aluminum oxide for wood. When I sand Aluminum on the machine I invest in the alumina zirconium- blue ones.

I have a separate sander for rebar and the like. Once you hit that on any wood belt, it is pretty much toast.

I guess I am a bit of a compulsive belt changer, but I am once bit and twice shy. Ruining those belts really annoys me.

Pete
 
Ok- thanks,
For this machine belts from AA Abrasives range around $12 for aluminum oxide, $22 for Zirc, and $32 for ceramic.

For wood I process mostly teak which is fairly abrasive and had wondered if the zirconium belts should be default for me.

The other side of it is I end up doing lots of general fabrication with aluminum and plastics.
AA sells only in lots of ten- I might see if I can find somewhere to buy a single or two in the harder mediums to try out.
 
For Teak, I suspect 150 might be too fine. And really it depends on what you are looking for from the machine.

I do sand aluminum on mine and always use a dedicated belt. Once it has touched aluminum, it burns wood.

It's hard to imagine the zirconium belts doing better than twice the life (on wood) of the aluminum oxide ones, so I think you're probably buying the correct belt for working teak.

Pete
 
I use standard aluminum oxide for wood. When I sand Aluminum on the machine I invest in the alumina zirconium- blue ones.

I have a separate sander for rebar and the like. Once you hit that on any wood belt, it is pretty much toast.

I guess I am a bit of a compulsive belt changer, but I am once bit and twice shy. Ruining those belts really annoys me.

Pete

No metal on a wood sander please- the sparks play havoc with the wood dust.

Cloth backed belts are IMHO better especially on a horizontal sander, when the backing gives way the belt is done. no matter how good the abrasive.

I'd give the ALOX belt a go with the Teak- most of what makes teak abrasive to tool steel is nothing to ALOX. Teak can be waxy-oily and I'd say that would be the limiting factor for belt-life.
 
Ok thanks- teak is odd.
Waxy oily is spot on and rather soft.
Yet it has that reputation for needed carbide tooling.
I never notice if that is true perhaps as my shop has carbide on everything from the band saw to the joiner.

I guess clogging the belt might be a bigger issue with teak as its dust is sort of fluffy and stringy.
I think the sander manual had something to say about open or closed coat- have to check.

I just ran a typical job on the joiner I’d like to get over to the edge sander-
Prefab teak deck panels: 3/8”x2” 40” lain on scrim with butyl in place and needing O to 1/8” trims.
I need the machine aggressive enough to take the stock off and finish not so important.
 
Teak is said to be abrasive because of the silica content but my experience is that most woods are abrasive to HSS to a greater or lesser extent when the cutting speeds are high.
Teak works well by hand and IME is no worse than any other tropical hardwood.
For what you describe I'd be patiently using a mellow 120 belt with regular use of a gum rubber cleaning block. Hand sanding still has a place too.
 
Prefab teak deck panels: 3/8”x2” 40” lain on scrim with butyl in place and needing O to 1/8” trims

Sanding butyl as well as wood, or just wood edge?
Trim each pc for fit, or a given non-uniform batch to uniform width?

For fitting & jointing i use mostly 60 & sometimes 80 grit.
For appearance that will be finished with finer handblock or ROS I use 100 &120 gr.

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I don't know if teak is as bad as bloodwood? The latter will just kill belts rapidly by clogging with oily sawdust. Even a rubber belt cleaner does not help much more than the first attempt. The second & follow on attempts remove ever-less residue, which packs up on what then seems to amount to a pre-primed surface. Points being 1.) coarser belts last a little longer 2.)If possible i look for a knife solution because my experience has really not found a cost effective sanding solution for BW & sometmes cocobola. Except as may be the case with teak, the material cost is so high that making defect-free surfaces warrants the expense of excessive belt consumption.

FWIW when forced to sand; i string the gummed-up widebelts on a fencepost outside & weather eventually cleans them over a season or two.

For making batches of non-unifom material to calibrated width, i use shsper, power feeder, outside fence, climb cut.
I have (rarely) used power feeder, slightly offset fence/light cut, climb cut. Works on thin sock as log as cutter stays sharp.

smt
 








 
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