How are you guys sanding square cabinet door edges? I tried using our old school Ritter edge sander and its hard to get the saw marks out without sanding the door out of square.

My current technique is just a surf-prep ros but i'm trying to improve my door making process.

Any suggestions.

you are talking two different things. iIf you mean your edge is out of square that can happen by grahite compression.

If your door is knocked out of square clamp a block on the table square to the platten. Your doors will come out square unless you let Mongo do them.

I tried clamping a square edge but maybe im pushing too hard on one side or the other. How hard do you push

A square doesn't help, especially in a non-oscillating edge sander.
The leading edge of the abrasive is clean and is cutting well. By the time you get to the trailing edge of the door, (especially a long door), the abrasive is loaded and not cutting as effectively.

Throw in different densities of the material of the same edge, and it becomes a calculus that a fixed edge can't remedy.

Edge sanding is a skill. It takes a touch and feel. I flip each edge so I'm removing material from both directions. It always goes more aggressively in one direction than the other just because of how the grain lays.

Your best bet is to start with a square door. Sand as little as possible. Removing kerf marks is a lot of sanding. Try dressing the square edge of your sticking prior to assembly to eliminate the saw marks.

I machine sticking .020" oversized for inset fronts, or overlays with a large gaps.
That's leaving room to scribe doors on inset application, and on overlay where the fronts are far apart, a tiny bit out of square doesn't create significant issues.

How many hundreds of door a week are you working with? Methods depend on volume

works well for me been doing it since 81. Feel is part of it as well just like a stroke sander, another machine that takes feel.

the old guy ran a shop of over 400 people and at that level he said at times their face frames were built on jigs so they were exactly the same and the inset doors were sanded on jigs on the edge sander the jig held the door in such a way that it bottomed out stopping from sanding out of square or removing too much material. Doors were the same, they jig took the human error out of it.

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The leading edge of the workpiece wil tend to abrade faster. It has less to do with paper loading with dust than the mechanics of the operation. If you were to hold a circular piece against the belt it would spin, the flat work piece is trying to do the same. The solution is to bias your pressure towards the trailing portion of the work. Pencil lines on the edge will be a tell tale of where you are sanding or not.

Mr Fee, "how hard do you push?" Is there really an answer to that question? Use a hand plane if a sander doesn't work for you. A edge sander is not old school, it's about the only solution that you need to learn how to use. Spend time learning the skills on scrap. No one slaps down a board on a machine and immediately knows all the subtleties. It takes time and practice. Not fancy solutions.

Build your doors 16th larger on all sides and run them through your shaper for edge profile at the final stage.Don't waste your time sanding or anything.

This works very well for us

https://kundig.com/products/uniq

I ran a non oscillating edge sander for years and used Tom Gardner’s technique of putting pencil lines on the edge to gauge what was coming off. You will soon learn where the pressure needs to be. Karl’s method of flipping will work as well. I also built a sloped table to get more use of the belt. Just takes a little practice.

I now have a Kundig Unique and it is easier for equal removal when using the split fence but that is a big jump up in price.

I quite like the Mike Farrington double-tapered tablesaw sanding disc for this operation. I suspect it's not that practical for high volume shops.

You can also angle the table so that the door edge covers the entire width of the belt. By angle I mean that the end of the table at the unpowered end of the sander is lower down than the end at the outfeed side. That minimizes the "dust under the end of the sanded portion" problem.

I think the best way to do it is to cut your doors 1/8” oversized. Then even if they are square use a straight knife or even a double edge ease bit and size the doors down to final size on the shaper.

A friend of mine has a Felder edge sander that has an attachment that operates like a jointer. See pic for the idea. maybe there is an aftermarket fence for your sander? Maybe you could make one?

View higher quality, full size image (682 X 544)

https://forum.canadianwoodworking.com/forum/tools/power-tools/1287730-ever-see-a-jointer-belt-sander