I’ve done a 180 on this. See my post further down in the thread. George
Hold tight on this. After rereading the web page dgreen sent maybe I need to retry the Wixey. George
I recently installed a Wixey WR-510 Digital Planer Readout on my Dewalt DW-735 planer. I am not overly thrilled with its performance. In fact I would only give it two or three, at the most, stars. Part of the problem was my expectations. I thought it would give me an accurate readout of the thickness my planer was set to cut. Instead it gives an accurate readout of the thickness of a board after it has passed through the planer. You bring the board back around to the infeed side, place it on the readout foot and place the readout slide on top of the board. Then if your board is still (hopefully) too thick you can switch the Wixey to Incremental and digitally adjust the planer to take off the amount you still need to cut. However the planer head goes up or down 1/16 inch for one turn, 1/32 for 1/2 turn, 1/64 for 1/4 turn, etc. so I easily make the correct adjustment without the Wixey. And it is easier to read the thickness with my dial caliper.
Also the Wixey resolves readings to 1/32 of an inch. However if it is above or below the 32nd it reads in .005 inch increaments. When I get a reading like 0.595 is that more or less than 19/32. I would rather not do the math. When I look at my dial calipers I can tell at a glance that is more than 19/32.
The Wixey is back on the shelf and the Dewalt scale has two small holes in it that it didn’t have before.
You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing. – Michael Pritchard <!—-><!—-> <!—->
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Edited 2/6/2009 11:20 pm ET by DustyGeorge
Edited 2/7/2009 1:15 pm ET by DustyGeorge
Replies
I am very confused by your review, is this the proceedure you were following?
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Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
~ Denis Diderot
I thought that was exactly the procedure that I followed but after reading it again maybe I need to give it another shot. After you read this I will delete the original post.
George
You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing. - Michael Pritchard<!----><!----><!---->
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Edited 2/6/2009 10:46 pm ET by DustyGeorge
Please don't delete it, others may have the same experience and what you discover may be of benefit to them.
It can be hard to get anything useful out of a thread when the original post is gone.
I hope you get it to work for you, yours is the first I have heard of someone being unhappy with that tool.
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Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.~ Denis Diderot
Oooo, Dusty, you don't like your Wixey??? I wuvvvvv my Wixey! I just decide, in decimals, how thick I want my board to be, and start planing. When I hit the Magic Number, I'm done.
Not to say it's perfect. I haven't been able to get it zeroed completely, it's about .02 off. I'd never try to use it to get a thickness reading on an unknown board, it's just too sensitive to the smallest movement. But it's made planer life pretty darned sweet in my shop!
I have a 20 inch PM. Would you recommend a Wixey for it or is it just for the shoe box planers?
You might have to get a little creative. Take a look.
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Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.~ Denis Diderot
Looks like he did a nice job. Is it worth it?
I don't know, but if it had been available when I was still working two jobs I would have bought one.
My instinct says yes it's worth it but I have no real world basis for saying so.
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Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.~ Denis Diderot
Thanks, when I was using it today, I was wondering if they were made for such machines. I will probably wait till I get used to the machine before I decide.
I hope the egg on my face is low cholesterol. After weading that Forestgirl wuuvved her Wixey, I studied the link dgreen sent and reinstalled it this morning. Reinstallation and calibration went smooth and this time it read the cutter head setting. Don't know why I couldn't get it to read that last night but I do have a natural talent for messing things up. After reinstallation I milled a bunch of soft maple to 1/2 and 3/4 inches. When the Wixey said the cutter head was set to 1/2 or 3/4 inches, that is exactly what my caliper said the stock coming out of the planer was. I think that I am going to like it. Don't know that I will ever learn to "wuuvv" it. It definitely gets a five star rating even with .005 readout. I don't know what they could do to improve that. If we were using the metric system we wouldn't have to mess with those awkward factions and we would be used to decimals. But that is a whole nuther subject.
GeorgeYou don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing. - Michael Pritchard<!----><!----><!---->
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I stopped using it after the 4th or 5th battery replacement. It seems the little critter is always "on" despite the on/off function. Cheers,Peter
Better life through Zoodles and poutine...
How old is yours? The recent (2 years?) models have an auto turn-off (unlike the Wixey angle doo-dah, which does need to be turned off).
I'll bet if you call the makers, they'll replace it if it's defective.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Edited 2/8/2009 12:33 am by forestgirl
"If we were using the metric system, we wouldn't have to mess with those awkward fractions......"
"The motion has been made and seconded. All in favor of immediately switching to the metric system, say aye"
AYE
That's great news! It's OK if you don't wuvvv it, just treat it right, LOL!forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Glad you gave it another try.
I have the older style Wixey DRO for my DeWalt planer. I originally bought it for my Ridgid planer and kept it when I sold the planer to buy the DeWalt. I didn't really like the way it mounted on the DW735 though so a friend made a replacement for the scale bar. I didn't want anything fancy but he made it out a stainless steel and it's beautiful. The bracket for the DRO mounts perfectly and it works quite nicely. Here are some pictures.
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The original and the copy.
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All mounted up.
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It ends up very close to the case on the planer so I used oval nuts on the 10-32 screws.
Looks good. BTW how do you keep your planer so clean?
GeoegeYou don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing. - Michael Pritchard<!----><!----><!---->
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I polished it up for the pictures. :)
Actually I just haven't had a lot of time to work in the shop so it doesn't get real dusty.
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