On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 10:28:57 -0600, Duane Bozarth wrote:

Leon wrote:

"Duane Bozarth" wrote in message
...
charlie b wrote:

Plus the one I've had w/ the automated "planer as jointer"
machines--how do you control and drive a non-flat piece of material
past the cutter head w/o distorting it to get the initial flat
reference surface? That's the reason for the jointer initially and why
working a piece through the planer first (unless it's so thick as to
be essentially rigid) doesn't work.

These combination machines have a jointer to straighten and flatten the
stock. Then after flattening the stock you run it through the planer.
Have you seen the Rikon? The Rikon has short beds but has a 10" jointer
capacity and then you run the flat on one side wood below the bed area
to plane to thickness.

That's what I was talking about--although perhaps I didn't write it as
clearly as I could have

To drive the material across the planer/jointer as OP suggests seems to me
to be describing an automagic drive that would have sufficient support to
prevent kickback and drive a wide work piece against a rotating cutterhead
w/o compressing the workpiece. Seems a mean trick if he can arrange it.

It takes a significant amount of force to do that. I suppose one could
rearrange it to use something like a router in a plane and not move the
workpiece or make the cuts w/ such a cutter that works a lot less material
at a time, but that doesn't sound like what OP has in mind...

VERY well put.

Everyone so far is stuck in thinking about their existing jointer/planer
designs, which (a) scallop and (b) kickback, which means (c) they need a
particular type of power-feed.

If you don't have kickback, you don't need powerfeed. (And - hey -
jointers kickback, but DON'T HAVE A POWER-FEED -- right?
Note - this is a TOTAL red herring -- it's not the approach I take --but
it's worth thinking about!)

Assume, for the sake of argument, that kickback ain't a problem. And,
thus, the powerfeed, and compression of the workpiece, ain't a problem.

Pretend there's, say, Luke Skywalker's lightsaber suspended in there, and
all you have to do is run the board through on a flat table, slice the top
off perfectly level, flip it over, lower the lightsaber to
spec'd thickness, and run the board through again. BINGO! (Except for the
burn marks.)

Does that idea make everybody's conceptual problems go away?

Now, let's assume, as the old joke about economists goes, that I actually
HAVE a lightsaber....

Andrew