One of the most used tools in my shop!
Written: Jan 13 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Powerful, easy to use, and a real workhorse!
Cons: A little tough to adjust the drum.
The Bottom Line: Once your shop has the basics, this should be your next investment. It takes away much of the tedium of sanding, which makes woodworking a much more enjoyable hobby.
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| paul2887's Full Review: Performax 16-32 Plus Drum Sander |
This is one of those tools that falls into the "do I really need it?" category before you buy it, and then shifts into the "how did I ever get along without it?" category almost as soon as you get it home!
I was building a large, built-in desk unit for my home office, all out of quarter-sawn white oak. There were a lot of pieces to cut and sand during the construction process, so after a lot of internal debate, I took the plunge and bought a Performax 16-32. The decision was helped along tremendously by the reviews here on Epinions, so I wanted to return the favor.
Unpacking and setup is about what you would expect from any large woodshop tool. The instructions were clear and easy to follow, and most of the tool is already assembled. The stand actually took the most time, and that was no big deal.
After it's set up, the next step is adjustment, and this proved a little more difficult. The Perfomax has an open-throat design, which allows you to sand boards wider than the 16" drum (hence the 16-32 designation, meaning the drum is 16" wide but you can sand a board or panel up to 32" wide). The trick here is to get the drum exactly parallel with the table, so when the board passes under the drum it sands it completely flat, instead of slightly tapering it to one side or the other.
This adjustment is done with a somewhat funky bolt and knob arrangement, which causes the drum to move up or down at the open end until it's parallel. It took some fiddling with to get it right, and in the 1 1/2 years I have had the machine I have had to readjust it a couple of times. There are better ways that the Performax people could have designed this, and maybe that will be improved in newer models.
All that said, once I got it right - the process took about 15 minutes of fooling around - the machine worked fine, other than the periodic readjusting mentioned above. The other adjustment you have to make is with the tension and tracking on the feed belt, but this is a good design with little built-in adjustment wrenches, so that's pretty easy.
The last step is installing the sandpaper. The sandpaper comes in long, pre-cut strips of different grits, and is tapered on each end. One tapered end slips under a clip on the left end of the drum, then you unroll and align the paper diagonally across the drum until you get to the other end, where a second clip secures that end of the paper.
All in all, changing paper is pretty easy. The clips are somewhat hidden inside the ends of the drum, and it takes a little effort to get your fingers in place to exert a sufficient amount of pressure to open the clip. Apparently Performax acknowledges this can be a little tough, because they have a tool to help reach in and open the clip. The dealer said the tool is typically optional at additional cost, but was included free when I bought the sander through some promotional deal. I tried it a couple of times, but found I could do it easier with just my fingers. My advice would be to save the money on the clip release tool if you have to pay extra for it.
Speaking of options, Performax offers casters for $90, which I think is ridiculous. My dealer ordered me four aftermarket heavy-duty locking casters for about $35, and they work great.
The Performax has a built-in dust hood with a connection for a 4" hose, and believe me when I tell you that you need to have dust collection with this tool! It puts out quite a bit of very fine dust while in operation, and you and your shop will quickly be coated with it if you don't use some sort of collection.
Once set up, just plug it in and sand away. The motor is 115 volt, and is prewired with a cord and plug. No special wiring or circuits are required.
Operation is very simple. There is an on/off switch that starts the drum rotating, and a dial that starts the feed belt and adjusts the feed speed. A top-mounted handle raises and lowers the drum in relation to the fixed table, and a simple measuring gauge helps you get the drum to the desired height. The adjustment mechanism is fine enough to allow for very small movements of the drum, allowing you to sand to precise thicknesses.
It takes a little practice to get a feel for the belt speed and how much to sand off in one pass. This part is pretty obvious - you can sand deeper and faster with soft wood and narrow pieces than you can with harder woods or wider pieces.
I set up a roller support stand a few feet in front of the machine and a second one a few feed behind it, and was then able to easily feed 10-foot lengths of rough white oak through with no problem. The operation is self-feeding, and is very much the same as using a planer.
After cleaning up the boards and then ripping and cross-cutting them to the desired sizes, I ran them through the Performax again to finish-sand them. The resulting board was smooth and clean, and required only minimal hand sanding after assembly.
I also found that I could stack several pieces of the same width together and run them through on edge, which sanded a totally smooth, perfectly square edge on the boards. It works better and faster than my jointer in many instances!
Larger glue-ups like doors, face frames, and panels that are wider than 16" (up to 32" wide) work great as well. The open throat design lets you pass the wide panel through once, rotate it, and then pass it through again. As long as the drum is parallel to the table, the panel sands up flat across its entire width.
My built-in desk is done, and the Performax couldn't have been better! Without it, I shudder to think how many hours would have been spent with a hand sander!
In conclusion, the Performax 16-32 is well built, easy to operate, and powerful enough for anything I've thrown at it. It has been in my shop for over a year and a half, and gets almost constant use. It was well worth the money, and now I really do wonder how I ever got along without it!!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
paul2887
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Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 1 member
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