Hey, KenofCary, did you get your planer?

[MarkE]

Did you get your new G0453PX planer yet? What are you doing to remove all the ?@?#%%$^$%# grease? There is grease everywhere! Even on the cutter head and inserts and the all the rollers.


I understand coating unpainted surfaces to prevent rust, but they went a little nuts on this one. I cleaned it up best I could but when I turned it on for the first time, more grease got flung out. I couldn't find an easy way to dig it out from under the cutters. Should have tried a toothbrush I guess, but I already had a couple of hours into cleaning.

How was/is yours?

 

[KenOfCary]

Re: Hey KenofCary, did you get your planer?

I picked it up this morning and managed to get it off the truck and into the shop, but haven't started on the de-greasing yet. It IS coated in the stuff. Some dripping down the sides, etc.

I have a bottle of PG2000 from Woodcraft that they recommend for de-greasing that I'm planning to use. Doesn't leave as much film as WD-40. Used it on my drill press and it worked great there. Also use it to clean up old planes and such. Gets gunk as well as grease off metal.

I took some pics of the unloading. I'll get some more tomorrow and Saturday when I finally get it set up.

I went to Lowes today to get a 20AMP 240V plug for it. I need to get another outlet installed eventually, but for now it can share the one the table saw uses. Won't ever be running those at the same time anyway.

Was surprised it didn't come with the plug, but I'm thinking that is because they use the same base (with a different motor) for the 15" and 20" model and the 20" requires a 30AMP plug instead of the 20AMP, so they make that a user supplied part to save manufacturing steps. Who knows.

Did you notice that they supplied an allen wrench to remove the front and back covers, but you had to remove the covers to get to the box that it was in. :wsmile:

More later... - Ken.

 

[MarkE]

Re: Hey KenofCary, did you get your planer?

I picked it up this morning and managed to get it off the truck and into the shop, but haven't started on the de-greasing yet. It IS coated in the stuff. Some dripping down the sides, etc.

I have a bottle of PG2000 from Woodcraft that they recommend for de-greasing that I'm planning to use. Doesn't leave as much film as WD-40. Used it on my drill press and it worked great there. Also use it to clean up old planes and such. Gets gunk as well as grease off metal.

I took some pics of the unloading. I'll get some more tomorrow and Saturday when I finally get it set up.

I went to Lowes today to get a 20AMP 240V plug for it. I need to get another outlet installed eventually, but for now it can share the one the table saw uses. Won't ever be running those at the same time anyway.

Was surprised it didn't come with the plug, but I'm thinking that is because they use the same base (with a different motor) for the 15" and 20" model and the 20" requires a 30AMP plug instead of the 20AMP, so they make that a user supplied part to save manufacturing steps. Who knows.

Did you notice that they supplied an allen wrench to remove the front and back covers, but you had to remove the covers to get to the box that it was in. :wsmile:

More later... - Ken.

I used paint thinner to remove the shipping grease. It came off the flat surfaces pretty easily.

The cord on mine had crimp connectors attached, probably to connect to a disconnect switch instead of a plug.

I hadn't thought about the allen wrench being inside the base. :icon_scra

 

[ehpoole]

Re: Hey KenofCary, did you get your planer?

You can also use mineral spirits to remove the cosmoline.

However, I usually resort to the odor-free approach of wiping most of it off with paper towels, then stripping the rest with some paper towels and Windex. As long as you wipe dry afterwards there will no rust. Afterwards I polish them clean with TopSaver and a synthetic steel wool pad and they are good to go for the next year or so.

 

[KenOfCary]

Re: Hey KenofCary, did you get your planer?

The PG2000 is working very well at disolving the grease and I'm rapidly going through the box of disposable rags. Got the cutters fairly clean. It was easy to get to by removing the top cover and the pulley cover so I could pull on the pulleys to rotate the head. Shredded a lot of paper rags cleaning it. I just can't figure out how best to clean off the rollers. can only get to the underside of them and can't figure a way to rotate them withour turning on the machine.

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Still have some work to do tomorrow finishing the cleanup and assembly.

Here are some pics of the unloading.

I found a 2-ton engine hoist on sale at Harbor Freight and then got another 20% off on top of that. I was planning to rent one but decided between the shop equipment and the farm equipment one would come in handy to have around. This one is very solid, only thing I would change are the casters (which I probably will change one of these days.)

Picked the hoist up Tuesday and assembled it Wednesday while it rained outside. Then went on Thursday to pick up the planer at UPS.

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I think I'm really going to like this machine once I finish cleaning and setting it up.

- Ken.

 

[MarkE]

Re: Hey KenofCary, did you get your planer?

Ken, the drive rollers will rotate as you move those drive belts. They just move a lot slower than the cutterhead. Make sure the gear box is in the fast speed.

Nice job cleaning that cutterhead. :icon_thum

 

[KenOfCary]

Well I started using the machine for real work this morning. I had a bunch of 4/4 Curly/Tiger Maple that I needed to plane down to 3/4". One of the boards was 14-1/2" wide and I actually managed to bog down the Grizzly with that one. It tripped the thermal overload protection breaker in the machine. Finally found it in the magnetic switch box in the base. You have to take off both covers and unscrew the top of the magnetic switch box (Unplug first!) to reset the breaker.

This is the mag-switch box down next to the motor.

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Once I reset the breaker all was well with the machine. I slowed the feed rate to the lower speed and instead of turning the crank a full turn each pass I only turned it a half turn. Guess with hard wood like Maple and full width capacity of the machine I just needed to slow down and take a smaller bite.

After that learning experience it did a fine job of finishing all the rest of the Maple boards I had.

Here is the 14.5" board on top of the planer with some of the other finished boards in the background.

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The last picture is a close-up of the surface of the large board after planing. The machine did an excellent job. Won't be needing to do much sanding on that board.

- Ken.

 

[CDPeters]

NICE! The G0456px just went on my wish list :gar-Bi

Ken (or Mark) - what is the cut depth change over 1 revolution of the hand crank?

C.

 

[MarkE]

NICE! The G0456px just went on my wish list :gar-Bi

Ken (or Mark) - what is the cut depth change over 1 revolution of the hand crank?

C.

According to the manual, one full turn of the crank equals 1/16". I'm a little surprised that the motor's thermal overload tripped on Ken's cut. Sounds like he was taking a 1/16" cut on a full width piece. I would have thought that a 3hp planer should have been able to power through that cut.

 

[eyekode]

Hrm, I have a similar planer and one revolution is ~1/8 (actually it seems like even more then that). The only time I have bogged it down was when my DC backed up. I am surprised it tripped the thermal switch too. I wonder if the voltage is low?
Salem

 

[CDPeters]

I'm a little surprised that the motor's thermal overload tripped on Ken's cut.

I think Ken said Curly Maple x full width x 1 full revolution x high gear feed = thermal trip. All ok after low gear and 1/2 revolution depth. Sounds about right to me...

BTW Ken - nice looking stock!

 

[KenOfCary]

It was a full-width piece of curly maple - 14-1/2" wide. I should have measured the difference between the cut portion and the rest of the board but didn't. It looked like it was more than 1/16" but I'm not sure as I didn't measure it. 1/2 rotation is plenty enough for me per pass so for really hard wood that's what I'll use in future.

The thermal switch has an adjustment dial next to it. It was set on 15 and had markings for 14, 15, 16, and 17. I'm guessing that those refer to the AMP draw when it trips, but that's a guess. I didn't see any reason to set it higher unless it continued to trip once I slowed things down a little. I'm not in that big a hurry when I'm planing anyway. Hurrying just fills up the dust collecter bin quicker.:gar-Bi

Overall I'm really pleased with the machine. The boards couldn't have come out smoother and I saw no signs of tearout anywhere.

- Ken.