Monster Planer Restoration, SCMI S520

hi i'm mike farrington welcome back to my workshop aka the boardroom a while back i drove to omaha nebraska somewhere in middle america to pick up this mighty planer a similar story can be applied to pretty much every tool in my shop buy used in the best possible condition bring it back to the shop fix it up and put it to work this affords me a tool set way out of my price range if i were to purchase new the journey starts very early in the morning i'm a fan of road trips so driving across a state for a great deal on a tool is no problem in fact i actually quite enjoy it so what's the key to finding a good deal well i patiently shop and by patiently that could be even months or years waiting for a good deal after looking around the good deals become easy to recognize in this case a guy was retiring he needed to be out of his shop quickly so much of what he was selling was very fairly priced when moving heavy tools there's only one rule and that is failure is not an option in this case an engine hoist and some straps did the job just fine though i was a couple of hundred pounds over the max weight capacity of the hoist this planer along with four others just like it had been used in a fairly busy shop that made moldings and obviously planed a lot of lumber that being the case i knew i wanted to replace all the bearings and belts and give everything a real good cleaning so that's where i got started simple green is my cleaner of choice it's a good degreaser and less toxic than many other choices and anything too big to fit inside my ultrasonic cleaner gets scrubbed by hand after a trip through the ultrasonic cleaner i dunk all parts in clean water and dry them off with a space heater an ultrasonic cleaner is a must when restoring old grimy tools just fill it up with the cleaner of your choice and then press go i'm sure there's a more technical term but to me it just buzzes the liquid at a high rate this agitates and removes gunk quickly but more importantly it allows me to go do something else while it's running and as you can see here it works really well once everything was clean the first thingy to be reassembled is the infeed roller this is known as a segmented in-feed roller and was one of the key features i was looking for when shopping for this planer this was also where i found my first issue i had to have this shouldered sleeve remade this is where the bearing seats it looked to me like at some point the original bearing had started to partially or intermittently seize and combine that with some gunk and it ended up wearing a groove in the sleeve such that it broke when i was pulling the bearing off fear not though i have a neighbor who is a backyard hobby machinist type and is willing to help me with little parts like this for the princely sum of a hearty handshake after 23 years of use and abuse in the molding shop most of these segments were actually frozen in place so certainly time for a cleaning i started to take it apart only to find a ton of little pieces caked in grease and grime between the time to clean and reassemble plus the part that i needed to machine the thought to just replace the whole infeed roller with a factory new part crossed my mind so i jumped onto semi's parts website only to find that the in-feed roller cost 1 815 plus shipping which by the way is lots more than i paid for the entire planer after i picked my job off the floor i happily went back to cleaning and reassembling this in-feed roller and here's the payoff each of the segments have about an eighth inch of individual play yet they all work as one this means i can feed several pieces of lumber of different thicknesses through the planer all at once and none of them will get stuck rather than spending money on an in-feed roller i decided to splurge on a spiral cutter head this upgrade was not cheap but for me it was worth it zero tear out no matter which direction stock is fed makes life nice but the real game changer is that i start my sanding at my finishing grid which is normally 150 180 or 220. by using only one grit many of the common sanding problems are eliminated this of course is just a huge time saver reassembly starts with the cutter head which by the way weighs about 115 pounds has 201 cutters and a 5 inch diameter after that working from front to back the anti-kickback pawls are installed next up is the newly rebuilt in-feed roller with fresh bearings this lower edge where my index finger is pointing puts downward pressure on the stock just in front of where the cutter head is working its magic this helps to minimize tear out as the blades are lifting out of the cut this assembly is known as the chip breaker and as with the infeed roller it is segmented finding consistent high quality bearings can be a challenge these days but i've had good luck with timkin they're one of the companies that post virtually every spec you could ever want to know about their products if nothing else it shows that they're thorough these cams are what the outfeed roller ride up and down on if you're wondering why the cams have a two finger setup well this planer had an option for a double outfeed roller the two cams would ride up and down sharing the same pin with those fingers interlaced in retrospect i think i should have waited for a machine with a double roller setup i think a second roller that was rubber coated would be a very nice addition the benefit would be that the stock is held more firmly after it passes by the infeed roller here i'm installing the pressure bar which is a piece of spring steel that presses down on the stock right as it's passing the cutter head this helps stabilize all stock but it really helps when planing very thin pieces last but not least the outfeed roller goes in here's what it looks like mostly assembled first is a spacer bar that helps set the width of the assembly second are the anti-kickback pawls then comes the chip breaker followed by the in-feed roller and of course the mighty cutter head after that the pressure bar and outfeed roller as you could imagine lining all this stuff up was an act of aggravation i'm using a dead blow mallet but keep in mind i'm using very light taps hard blows could potentially put stress on the bearings this next piece limits the chip breakers from falling into the cutter it also helps capture the springs that apply downforce to each of the individual chip breakers here's a look at where the second outfeed roller would go this is just a plastic cover to plug up the hole i don't have a forklift but it's been my experience that a pallet jack and an engine hoist are a decent substitute the whole assembly drops in and is held in place with a few bolts i think this is a neat design to be able to pull the top end of the machine off with ease sure makes for easy repairs these are the springs for the in and out feed rollers quick side note during this process i was constantly amazed at how nice the machining is all castings have been deburred and chamfered i put a precision straight edge on every critical surface and only found a thousandth of an inch here and there when comparing this to a lower end machine it becomes obvious why a tool like this costs as much as it does fun fact when this planer was made way back in 97 it weighed almost as much as a honda civic and cost more than one so with that said i feel very lucky to have purchased this planer for about 10 cents on the dollar even though it's needed some work this is the chain that i cleaned earlier after soaking it in oil i installed it only to find that there were a couple of links causing a bit of a lump as it was going around so i ended up replacing it with a new chain this is the drive pulley for the transmission there's a v belt from the motor to this pulley the rpm is then geared way down and the chain is the output side this is the chain tensioner you can just make out this spring in the background there that pulls this lever and tightens the chain let's do a song recommendation the obvious choice would be omaha by the counting crows being that i went to omaha to pick the planer up but no that's not the recommendation rain king by the counting crows is this video song recommendation what a great song takes me back to the 90s when my parents would make my older sister drive me to high school and that was one of the few songs that we both really liked so we ended up listening to it quite a bit this may seem trivial but this is one of the main features i like about this planer the dust collection chute points either direction off to the side and doesn't get in the way of the top this is super rad because it keeps the top surface the planer open which works for me because i like to stack wood on top of the planer as it comes out many of the older planers have a giant dust chute right in the middle of the top which renders that space totally useless i haven't mentioned it yet but this planer is made by semi in italy it's the s520 model it has a 520 millimeter cut capacity which is about 20 and a half inches it's powered by a nine horsepower motor i clean off this small cover panel with my second favorite cleaner ace tone from the factory this cover came with a rubber pad i decided that some outdoor carpet would work i plan to keep a pair of calipers and a small ruler on this surface at this point the planer's been restored i wheel my trusty old jet 15-inch planer out of the way and set the mighty beast in place after connecting the dust collection hose i head out for a test drive as you would expect this thing is a monster it's quiet precise and a really nice tool to use i like that due to its square shape it nests nicely up against my jointer it's actually kind of a space saver in that regard i also really like that there are no knobs or wheels hanging off of either side so when i'm dancing between the front and back my clothes don't get hung up it has a four speed transmission ranging from about 16 feet per minute to 60 feet per minute [Music] the bed is power up and down the red button is a very slow up adjustment the switch is a faster up or down course adjustment it also has a mechanical height readout to the hundredth of an inch here's a quick shot of the surface left behind at 16 feet per minute not too bad i don't know what it is but i just love working on tools especially really nice ones like this planer i hope to do more of these types of videos in the future and i hope you enjoyed following along thanks for watching till next time

Channel: Mike Farrington

Views: 365,672

Keywords: woodworking, home improvement, furniture making, maker, carpentry, fine woodworking

Id: uA4fk6WQ2k8

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021