Thickness planer A thickness planer (also known in the UK and Australia as a thicknesser or in North America as a planer) is a woodworking machine to trim boards to a consistent thickness throughout their length and flat on both surfaces.
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"Planer" is the normal term in the UK and Australia for what is called a "jointer" in North America, where the former term refers exclusively to a thickness planer.
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A portable thickness planer A thickness planer consists of three elements: a cutter head which contains the cutting knives; a set of rollers which draw the board through the machine; and a table which is adjustable relative to the cutter head to control the resultant thickness of the board. Some portable thickness planers differ slightly in that the table is fixed and the cutter head/feed roller assembly is adjusted. Industrial thickness planers are capable of accepting very wide boards and removing large amounts of material in a single pass. These machines are driven by powerful motors and are of very heavy construction.
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Woodworking machinery that perform a similar function as hand planes include the jointer and the thickness planer, also called a thicknesser; the job these specialty power tools can still be done by hand planers and skilled manual labor as it was for many centuries. When rough lumber is reduced to dimensional lumber, a large electric motor or internal combustion engine will drive a thickness planer that removes a certain percentage of excess wood to create a uniform, smooth surface on all four sides of the board and in specialty woods, may also plane the cut edges.
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In recent times, a range of lightweight portable thickness planers have become available which use the cheaper, but noisy, universal motors rather than induction motors and are much less expensive than industrial versions. In Europe, the functions of the jointer and thickness planer are often combined into a single combination machine, a jointer-planer. In the U.K. this is called a planer–thicknesser or over–and–under.
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A jointer cannot be used to create a board of even thickness along its length. For this task, after jointing one face, a thickness planer is used. Thickness planers and jointers are often combined into one machine, with the work piece passing underneath the same rotating blade for thicknessing, but in the opposite direction. In the US this is called a planer–thicknesser or over-and- under.
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One problem often encountered when using a thickness planer is snipe. This manifests as a deeper cut on a short section of the board at either end and is caused by incorrect feeding or misalignment of the in-feed or out-feed tables, or an unnecessarily high setting of the rollers recessed in the surface of the in-feed table. It can be accommodated by keeping the board overlong to allow later trimming.
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How a thickness planer works. In operation, the table is set to the desired height and then the machine is switched on. The board is fed into the machine until it makes contact with the in-feed roller which grips the board and draws it into the machine and past the rotating cutter head. The knives remove material on the way through and the out-feed roller pulls the board through and ejects it from the machine at the end of the pass.
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These tools include a bandsaw (little changed from the original 1957 version), wood shaper, jointer, belt sander, strip sander, scroll saw and thickness planer. Changes from one function to the other is usually less than 90 seconds. One of the unique features of the Shopsmith is its method of speed control. Rather than multiple pairs of pulleys or an electronic speed control, the Mark V uses a Reeves-type continuously variable transmission consisting of two variable diameter pulleys controlled by a dial and worm gear.
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Several companies in Austria, Italy, France and Belgium manufacture what is commonly known in North America as a Euro(pean) combination machine, which typically contains a sliding-table saw with a scoring blade, a shaper, a thicknesser, a jointer, and a mortiser. These machines generally have 3 motors, one for the table saw, one for the shaper, and one shared by the thickness planer/jointer and mortiser. European combination machines are geared for the serious hobbyist or professional woodworker or cabinet maker. They are constructed of cast iron and heavy gauge steel, weigh from 1000 to 2000 lbs.
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A thickness planer is a woodworking machine to trim boards to a consistent thickness throughout their length and flat on both surfaces. It is different from a surface planer, or jointer, where the cutter head is set into the bed surface. A surface planer has slight advantages for producing the first flat surface and may be able to do so in a single pass. However the thicknesser has more important advantages in that it can produce a board with a consistent thickness, avoids producing a tapered board, and by making passes on each side and turning the board, may also be used for the initial preparation of an unplanned board.
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Fundamentally, a jointer's table arrangement is designed with two levels like a narrower thickness planer so that it consists of two long, narrow parallel tables in a row with a cutter head recessed between them, but with a side guide. This cutter head is typically driven by an electric induction motor. (Older machines were driven by belts from line shafts.) A moveable fence is normally set perpendicular to the tables, though some models may allow settings (adjustments) to various angles. These tables are referred to as the infeed and outfeed, the table from which the work piece is fed into the machine and the height reference table on which the work piece is floated over lightly as leaves the machine's cutting head.
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