Tooling for Double End Tenoner
Cutterheads from some other equipment can be used with a double end tenoner. December 11, 2006
Question
Does anybody know of a source for double end tenoner tooling? I bought an old Heian machine, and I'm having trouble finding tooling to fit the rear motors. They were originally intended to be used as saws, as they have a 1" arbor diameter. I want to use them as cope spindle to raise panels and do edge shaping.
Traditional shaper/moulder tooling doesn't have a large enough cutting circle and I can't dial the head in close enough to the work piece. I need tooling that has a 10-12" cutting circle. Do you need more cutting wings with the large diameter cutting circle? Also, the spindle speed is only 3450 RPM. Will this provide an acceptable finish at low feed speeds? Are the cuts per inch figured out the same way as on the moulder?
Forum Responses
(Solid Wood Machining Forum)
From contributor T:
A good source for larger diameter shaper tooling is Lemmon & Snoap Company. The number of wings and cut marks per inch can be figured just like on a moulder. You will need more wings due to the RPM's of your machine and the available feed rates. Lemmon and Snoap can help you tailor the tools to your machine to get the best finish.
From contributor D:
You could use the tenon heads from a disk tennnoning machine. Trenching heads from a cross-cut saw would also be okay either in pairs or used singly. A diameter of 10 inches would also mean that the depth of the cutter marks would be quite shallow and a cutter mark pitch of half of that produced by a 5 inch block would produce a similar finish. A peripheral speed of about 10,000 feet per minute is about right for cutter blocks and your present spindle speed will give this.
From contributor T:
The knife marks per inch are figured out the same as on a moulder. However, you will need more wings in tools of a 10 to 12 inch diameter and a 3450 RPM. Your feed rate, RPM's, and finish quality required are needed to figure out how many wings you will need for the best cut. What feed rates does your machine have? What material are you cutting? Also, what arbor capacity do the rear spindles have? A great deal of the tenoners I have seen can only run saws if they were setup that way in the beginning.
From the original questioner:
Thank you all for your help. I'll be in contact shortly with the sources listed here.
The material is 3/4" white pine. Feed speed is variable via a step pulley type setup. I can't find the exact specs yet, but just from observation, it appears to be in the range of 20-60fpm. The vast majority of my profile will be cross grain cuts. The rear spindles are 1" diameter x 3" usable length, and are threaded and flanged like your typical 1" table saw arbor. I would like to use the rear spindles to attempt panel raising and shelf and door edge type profiling.
From contributor T:
Contributor D is correct about the shallower knife marks. This can effectively give you a finer finish with a higher chip load specification. In your situation, a 10" cutter with 4 to 6 wings, and a feed rate at about 23FPM will give you a mean chip load in the fine finish range. If you ran a 3 wing cutter, you would get a medium finish range, but only at the machine's slowest speed. If you wanted faster feed rates, you can increase the number of cutter wings or increase the spindle speed.
