Saturday, April 5, 2014

The Planer Cabinet

The design of this planer cabinet is a combination of ideas I found from the internet, plus my own tweaks.

It is on wheels so it can be moved around my small shop.  The top is a melamine board, and the door is 3/4 inch plywood, both I rescued from someone that was going to throw them to the trash.  I cut the top to size and glued up some veneer on the sides.


The frame is made with defective 2x3 pieces that I got at a 70% discount at the home depot.  I planed them and jointed them and they ended up doing the job just fine.   I joined them with glue, drywall screws and rabbet joints, I think it will be more than strong enough.



This is the inside of the cabinet.  There's an opening no the left side which I covered with mesh so the air can escape, and on the right, a hole where the chips come in from the planer.  The idea is, once it fills up with chips, to scoop them out into my trash container.

This is the right side .


Making all these connections is always a bit of a pain.  I ended up using the 2.5" to 4" adapter that came with the planer, and to that I connected a 45 degree PVC fitting I bought at the home depot.  Then I 3D-printed an adapter (in blue) from that to the clear pipe.  I had to tweak adapter a tiny bit with tape to make for a very snug fit so the air from the planer wouldn't eventually push it out.


This is the piece that connects with the cabinet.  That part is also 3D printed.

This is how the 3D models looked like. 


I didn't take a picture of this but while doing this, I built myself a miter jig and also finished a spline jig I had already half built and used them to build a frame for the mesh for the air vent.  it looked pretty cool for an experiment:



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