I don't use my DW735 planter that often but I love it when I need it. I bought a Shelix cutter head for it a few years ago when they had it on sale for around $300, IIRC. Not sure it was worth the upgrade but it works well enough for me. I tried to use the planer about a week ago and it only fed the stock in a few inches before it stopped feeding, even though the motor was still running. Looking underneath, I noticed that cutterhead was not spinning either. I opened the top cover and removed the cover over the cutterhead to look around and noticed what looked like some melted rubber off to one side. Closer inspection found this (I pulled it up through the gap):
The drive belt was completely shredded. I have had the planer for at least 9 years now and I bought it used from an estate sale, though it looked like it had barely been used when I got it. I do not think that I use it enough to wear out the belt but I suppose that after 9 years, the urethane rubber (or whatever it is) is bound to deteriorate some with time. I opened up the side access panel to take a look and it was quite the mess in there. I am not sure if this happened over several uses or with one catastrophic failure. As parts of the belt came loose, they obviously got caught in the roller drive chain which may be when it finally stopped altogether. It took me about 15 minutes slowly turning the cutter shaft by hand to get the chain sprocket to move enough to remove all of the rubber and string. Here is what is left of the belt: One thing that I discovered as I was cleaning out the debris is that there is a little grate that I always just assumed was for air flow/cooling but I now think may be so that you can inspect the belt without taking the entire cover off the side. It it has a latch instead of screws (uses a allen wrench to operate just like all of the other screws on the planer), making it easy to take off and I think it also allows you access to place the belt on the motor shaft pulley, since the surrounding cover is not as easily removed.
From now on I will open up the hatch every now and then to inspect the belt for wear or damage. If you have never looked at your drive belt, now might be a good time to inspect it for damage. You can remove the side cover with just 4 screws easily enough but this should be good enough for a quick check.
I went out to all of the usual online tool parts places and found that the OEM replacement belts are $54 at most of them and also at Amazon. I found a couple of sites that were only $40-something but with shipping, they basically came up the the same price. There are several aftermarket versions on Amazon that are under $20 for a pair of them but all that I checked had enough bad reviews about them only lasting a few uses to make me skeptical. It turns out that with its free shipping, Amazon is the best deal and since returns are so easy there, I decided to go with their OEM belt. They also said that they would deliver it within 2 days, which helps with my current project. Since it was only $14 for a pair of the best reviewed aftermarket belts on Amazon, I decided to add a pair to my shopping cart as well so I can see if they are as bad as some of the reviews claim they are. Having a new OEM to compare side-by-side will help me know whether they are worth even trying or not.
As an aside, I am pretty impressed with how they designed the drive mechanism. The motor directly drives the cutterhead via the belt. The cutter head in turn drives a gear box on the other side of the planer that drives the feed rollers. Chains and sprockets on both sides keep the rollers in sync. Having the cutter driven by a belt provides a level of safety for the mechanism so that if you take too big of a cut, the belt will slip protecting both the motor from overloading and the cutter head. Since the cutter head drives the gear box, the roller feed rate stays consistent with the cutter head -- if the cutter slows down because you are taking a deeper cut or the belt is just worn and slips, the rollers will slow down the feed rate accordingly.
Anyway, I thought I would post this out there for anyone who has one of these planers. Might be time to inspect the belt! After I get the replacement belts in hand, I will compare the OEM and aftermarket belts and also report back about how big of a pain it is to put them on.
Update: The aftermarket belts arrived yesterday and seem sturdy enough so I decided to go ahead and put one on instead of waiting for the OEM one (It arrived today). I watched a couple of videos showing how to mount the belt. The one on eReplacement parts recommends that you remove the pulley and then leverage the pulley and belt back on the shaft together. It requires a pulley puller to remove the pulley and a 7/8 socket (I used a 24mm because that is what I had) to remove the retaining nut. They made it look easy in the video but that turned out to be challenging. Aligning the key way up with the key on the shaft turned out to be really hard because the shaft or the pulley tends to turn and I felt like I would eventually damage the pulley if I kept trying. I guess I should have found a way to immobilize the shaft but even with that, I am not sure it would have helped that much. So I put the pulley back on and took the approach in another video where you get one edge of the belt on the pulley and rotate it by hand until it works its way into place. The belt fits very tightly and there does not appear to be any way to adjust that so this was pretty dang hard as well. Before you try either approach you have to remove one of the chain sprokets and the chain's idler pulley.
When it finally did go partially on, I realized that it had partially slipped off the motor pulley. Doh! This was hard enough that I decided that there was no going back. The grooves of the belt and pulleys makes it pretty difficult to get the belt to move over. It required significant force pushing the belt from the side so that it sort of twists while turning the cutter head pulley by hand, first to get it over the raised edge of the cutter head pulley and then on the motor pulley. Fortunately, the motor pulley does not have a raised edge. It took at least an hour from start to finish to get the belt properly seated on both pulleys. I can imagine that some of the issues that caused the negative reviews of the aftermarket belt could be cause by damaging the belt while trying put it on or possibly not getting in completely on. If you leave any of the belt hanging over the edge, it will probably eventually rub against the chain that adjusts the height as there is only a bout 1/4" clearance.
The only obvious difference between the OEM belt (left) and the aftermarket one appears to be the color. I decided not to take the OEM belt out of the package as I may return it. Without taking it out of the package I cannot tell if perhaps there is a subtle difference in the size but they seem to be the same size and thickness and both have the embedded cord running through them. When I turn the planer on, it seems to run smoothly with almost no belt flutter so on first impression, the aftermarket seems like it may be just fine. I ran some light loads through it today and noticed no issues. If it fails prematurely, I will update this post. Even if it does not last as long, for less than 1/7th the cost per belt and as long as it lasts a few years, not days, weeks or months, the after market belt will probably be my go-to in the future. By the way the one I purchased was made by FOXBC. While researching, I discovered that they also sell spiral and helical replacements cutter head. Those are probably not enough cheaper to not go with the Shelix but it at least may indicate that they have some technical understanding of this machine.
While I was at it, I blew out all of the dust from inside the machine, including in the various chains and sprockets for height adjustment. I also waxed the bed and cleaned off the rollers. The last thing I did was relevel the infeed and outfeed tables. The were drooping a little and I think that may have been why I started seeing snipe a little while ago. When I first got the planer, the in/out feed tables were perfectly level and there was no snipe. The little bit of light planing I did today showed no signs of snipe so it looks like it worked.
--Nathan, TX. Hire the lazy man. He may not do as much work but that's because he will find a better way.
Mine is 12yrs old I did the Byrd Shelix Cutterhead upgrade 8yrs ago I’ve put a heap of recycled Aussie hardwoods through the thicknesser Haven’t really had any issues Thanks for the heads up, I’ll check the belts
Thanks for the information. I'm interested to find the results of your comparison of the belts. I've had mine for almost 16 years and used it quite a lot with no real problems.
Recently, after planning a lot of pine, it became difficult to crank in up and down. When I looked inside, I was surprised that it moved at all.
I cleaned it and replaced the blades (long overdue) and it's working like new.
“Fake quotes will ruin the internet” — Benjamin Franklin
I have a little bit of accumulated dust in that same corner but that is after 9 years without ever cleaning it out. Might want to check to make sure that the cowling over the cutter is completely screwed down and check to see if there is a crack or something or even make sure that the blower that expels the chips is working correctly.
--Nathan, TX. Hire the lazy man. He may not do as much work but that's because he will find a better way.
I received the replacement belts and put one on my machine today. I updated the OP with what I found. Summary: The aftermarket belts appear to be sturdy enough and it is a PITA putting the belt on.
--Nathan, TX. Hire the lazy man. He may not do as much work but that's because he will find a better way.
One more thing. While cleaning all of the debris and sawdust ou,t I did notice that there was a lot of what appears to be fine shreds of the cord that runs through the belt sucked up against the motor housing. That seems to indicate that the belt started to wear out over time and only failed after it eventually got too thin.
--Nathan, TX. Hire the lazy man. He may not do as much work but that's because he will find a better way.
Thanks for the detailed follow-up. It sounds like installation was a bit of a challenge - congratulations on your success!
Overall, this is a very well designed machine. It performs well for a light-weight. Most maintenance is easy. However, I noticed that the user's guide says to have the belt replaced at a repair center, which most people would never do.
“Fake quotes will ruin the internet” — Benjamin Franklin
Chuck, have you had a chance to inspect your belt yet? 16 years is a long time. Mine has only seen light and infrequent use over the last 9 years, though I do not know exactly how old it is since I bought it at an estate sale.
--Nathan, TX. Hire the lazy man. He may not do as much work but that's because he will find a better way.
I recently bought a 735 and immediately installed a Lux Cut III helical cutterhead in it- never used it with the straight knives cutter head. Might be a bit foolish, sure, but I knew I wanted a helical from the get go. And considering I’ve noticed nicks in the straight blades I removed without having ever used them, it seems that Dewalt blades are likely indeed as crummy as people say they are, and even if you went with the carbide edged straight blades from infinity tools, you’d be missing out on some of the benefits of the helical cutterhead over the stock blades.
Anyways, I say all this to say that one of the biggest oh **** moments I had the whole time I was swapping out the head, had to be putting the belt back on. I ended up needing to install the wheel with the belt already around it, using a clamp for leverage. It was a MASSIVE frustration.
Side note- got the lux cut going on a few test cuts, they’re really really nice, but it leaves some super faint lines along the length of the cutting operation. I think it might be a slightly mis seated cutter, gonna try to diagnose which ones are mis seated soon and better seat them, but could use any suggestions from people who have had experiences with Byrd or Lux Cut heads.
I’ve got a Shelix cutter, but if you’re having lines in only one area then I’d guess it’s an mis-seated cutter. Easy enough to remove them and dust off the seat.
Ryan/// ~sigh~ I blew up another bowl. Moke told me "I made the inside bigger than the outside".
