The Most Terrifying Tool Ever

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Delfin

Good point, although if the tool moves to the work or you have to move the work to the tool, the danger level is there. I only lost a small piece of a finger and bone on my last major project, so I count myself lucky.

I'm kind of surprised they didn't build a leveler for foam out of a guarded horizontal band saw or something similar. That beast looks like it was designed by the Marquis de Sade.

I believe the guy who builds these tried a band saw design. The problem with it was the large chunks of foam debris get sucked into the mechanism, which is not good. This tool turns all the foam into dust which you can vacuum extract, and has no exposed parts that can be bound up. The guy who makes them is the guy who sprays the foam. He (obviously) hates doing the shaping and was happy to farm it out long ago. He's been doing it forever, many of the fishing boats in Alaska have his foam in them.

[goat]

I don't know about no shaper, but these scare the hell out of me;

[minaret]

Originally Posted by goat

I don't know about no shaper, but these scare the hell out of me;

Yeah, that chick does look scary!

[minaret]

http://www.woodworking.org/AccidentSurvey/Shaper.pdf





Here's a small shaper. They are basically very large routers with loads of horsepower, so you can use very large router bits. Very dangerous tool.

[minaret]

A shaper cutter head. Imagine one of these flying across the room at a few hundred miles an hour!

[minaret]

Or a bigger head for trim profiles...

[Delfin]

I feel like Crocodile Dundee...."You think that's a cutter head? Now THIS is a cutter head...."

Each of those little squares is s 1" by 1" razor sharp chisel blade. These are nice because once they get dull, just loosen the screw and rotate the cutter blade. I found the only way to use it was with a carefully constructed jig and a lot of careful band saw cutting, so all you were asking this 12,000 rpm spinning moment of death was to shave off the bits you couldn't remove with the band saw.

[Delfin]

Originally Posted by minaret

I believe the guy who builds these tried a band saw design. The problem with it was the large chunks of foam debris get sucked into the mechanism, which is not good. This tool turns all the foam into dust which you can vacuum extract, and has no exposed parts that can be bound up. The guy who makes them is the guy who sprays the foam. He (obviously) hates doing the shaping and was happy to farm it out long ago. He's been doing it forever, many of the fishing boats in Alaska have his foam in them.

Makes sense. Just seems like the toxic dust kicked up might be reduced a bit with another design, but the guys who know how tools should be built are the guys using them.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Delfin

I feel like Crocodile Dundee...."You think that's a cutter head? Now THIS is a cutter head...."

Each of those little squares is s 1" by 1" razor sharp chisel blade. These are nice because once they get dull, just loosen the screw and rotate the cutter blade. I found the only way to use it was with a carefully constructed jig and a lot of careful band saw cutting, so all you were asking this 12,000 rpm spinning moment of death was to shave off the bits you couldn't remove with the band saw.

You couldn't do multiple passes with incrementally deeper cut on each pass? Just have to reset the fence a hair on each pass.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Delfin

Makes sense. Just seems like the toxic dust kicked up might be reduced a bit with another design, but the guys who know how tools should be built are the guys using them.

Oh, I'm sure you could make a vastly more user friendly design. That's clearly not what this particular design is about though! It is about getting the job done well at max speed. The poor operator is the third concern at best. Damn thing weighs a ton! Not to mention the "sphincter factor" of this particular tool is very very high!

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Delfin

I feel like Crocodile Dundee...."You think that's a cutter head? Now THIS is a cutter head...."

Each of those little squares is s 1" by 1" razor sharp chisel blade. These are nice because once they get dull, just loosen the screw and rotate the cutter blade. I found the only way to use it was with a carefully constructed jig and a lot of careful band saw cutting, so all you were asking this 12,000 rpm spinning moment of death was to shave off the bits you couldn't remove with the band saw.

Did you use a featherboard?

[Delfin]

Originally Posted by minaret

Did you use a featherboard?

I guess I don't know what a feather board is..., but I guess I did. I cut and formed the exact shapes I was looking for out of 3/4 plywood, attached clamps to that, then cut as close as I could the finish piece on the bandsaw before attaching this to the jig, securely clamped into place. The key was to allow a 'ramp' for the cutterhead to engage the finish piece. If there was any edge at all, the head would grab the edge and you ran the risk of being pulled into the cutterhead, after having the piece flung across the room. It was these corner pieces I had to make a few dozen of to finish the inside of the windows. I wanted the frame to follow the shape of aluminum window frame.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Delfin

I guess I don't know what a feather board is..., but I guess I did. I cut and formed the exact shapes I was looking for out of 3/4 plywood, attached clamps to that, then cut as close as I could the finish piece on the bandsaw before attaching this to the jig, securely clamped into place. The key was to allow a 'ramp' for the cutterhead to engage the finish piece. If there was any edge at all, the head would grab the edge and you ran the risk of being pulled into the cutterhead, after having the piece flung across the room. It was these corner pieces I had to make a few dozen of to finish the inside of the windows. I wanted the frame to follow the shape of aluminum window frame.

Featherboards.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Delfin

I guess I don't know what a feather board is..., but I guess I did. I cut and formed the exact shapes I was looking for out of 3/4 plywood, attached clamps to that, then cut as close as I could the finish piece on the bandsaw before attaching this to the jig, securely clamped into place. The key was to allow a 'ramp' for the cutterhead to engage the finish piece. If there was any edge at all, the head would grab the edge and you ran the risk of being pulled into the cutterhead, after having the piece flung across the room. It was these corner pieces I had to make a few dozen of to finish the inside of the windows. I wanted the frame to follow the shape of aluminum window frame.

Yep, incremental cuts. Or cut it close on the band saw and go to the 4" (if that's the required size) oscillating spindle sander. Much safer. Even on a shaper max depth of cut on any single pass should not exceed 1/8". It's dangerous, bad for the finish piece, and bad for the tool. Yours look real nice though.

[Delfin]

Originally Posted by minaret

Yep, incremental cuts. Or cut it close on the band saw and go to the 4" (if that's the required size) oscillating spindle sander. Much safer. Even on a shaper max depth of cut on any single pass should not exceed 1/8". It's dangerous, bad for the finish piece, and bad for the tool. Yours look real nice though.

That wouldn't have worked as well, and taken quite a bit longer. The jig I built had two handles on it, and the edge of the 3/4" plywood ran up against a collar, with the cutter head engaging the work clamped into place, but only to the depth the collar allowed - around 1/32nd". Featherboards couldn't be used because of the curves involved. It was more a matter of carefully cutting the finish piece on the band saw, then carefully easing it into the spiral cutter for finish cutting. In any case, it was hairy.