Thickness Planer

a woodworking machine for milling (planing) boards, beams, or planks to the proper thickness. The cutting tool of a thickness planer is a series of knives on a revolving shaft. Single planers have one revolving shaft, which planes (finishes) the top surface of the board; the shaft is fixed above the table, and the board is moved along the table by the feed rolls. Thickness planers that finish two surfaces of the board (two-surface planers) have an additional cutting shaft mounted on the table. This shaft, the first in the path of the board, planes the lower surface of the material. The thickness of the piece produced is governed by the height of the adjustable table.

Usually the pieces that are worked on thickness planers have already been subjected to preliminary planing on jointers. One type of two-surface planer is a combination jointer and thickness planer. In such a planer, the jointing unit gives the board a flat surface and the planer finishes the board to an even thickness relative to that surface.

Thickness planers plane boards with a width of 315 to 1,250 mm and a thickness of 5 to 160 mm. The diameter of the cutting shafts varies from 100 to 165 mm, with either two or four knives mounted on a shaft, and the rotation speed of the shafts is approximately 5,000 rpm. The feed rate of boards into thickness planers varies from 5 to 30 m/min, and the maximum power of the electric motor is up to 44 kilowatts.