Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I bought the PC305tp as a second planer. I have a Grizzly 15 inch planner that is a 3 cutter head heavy cast iron build with a 2 hp motor (I believe they are now 3 hp standard). I have about 1200 board feet of a mix of white pine,oak,cherry,ash and maple with about 1/2 still in the rough and the other half lightly planed. I have a storage shed about 50 feet from my shop and I didn't want to drag all the lumber to the shop to plane and then back to the shed for storage. All the lumber I have was board run so there are some really nice boards and some with a bunch of defects to work around and as such I wanted to clean it all up and cut out all the defects so as to only have perfect usable boards in the storage shed. So my solution was the Porter Cable pc305tp which is the same planer as Delta tp305 as far as I can tell so you can read all the reviews for that planer and it would hold true for the Porter Cable.
So pushing all the lumber through the Porter Cable is really pushing it and my sense is it's not a good idea. I set the planer up in about 1/2 hr. no problems--adjusting the feed tables carefully will help minimize snipe. I ran several boards through -- cherry and pine and it did a good job with negligible snipe --I set up a roller support about several feet from the planer on the out feed side and set it level to the bed of the planer and hence no significant snipe that couldn't be taken out with light sanding. It worked harder for the cherry then the pine (expected) and the boards I ran through were about 6 to 10 inches wide and 10 ft long. I kept feeling the motor to see if it was getting hot and it didn't feel warmer then what I would have expected. I didn't take more then 1/4 turn and sometimes a bit less and it took several passes for each board. The milling of the boards will effect how many passes it takes--band saw mills in my experience yield smoother lumber than circular mills. Anyway I feel pretty confident that if I get through this pile in small batches it will not over tax the machine. The only thing that concerns me is that all the competing models have overload reset buttons to protect the motors. If anyone knows I would be interested to understand better if it is needed or is the 20 amp breaker in the service panel enough. The thermal reset buttons on the machines I looked at were 18 amp breakers which I think is how much overload is allowable with a Service Factor of 1 for a 15 amp rated motor which is what most all the 12-1/2 portable planers are. I ordered an 18 amp breaker from a Dewalt parts dealer that I was planning on installing in a connector box just before the planner -- I would still appreciate others posting review on this machine to share their thoughts on this concern --but still for the money a good portable planer if you take your time , keep the knives sharp and run small batches at a time. GREG
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Product Description:
Includes 15 Amp Benchtop Planer - PC305TP
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