Sanding your molding with a flap wheel head after the molder will help decrease surface markings and aid in creating a better product. In working with molders it is critical to keep spindle tooling clean, sharp, and well balanced. With this combination and making sure to not over drive feed speeds a decent profile can be produced on most molders.
The next step is proper sanding of the material after the shapes have been created. I have found only two methods that will work well for sanding profiled material. One is using a shaped wheel that matches the profile of your product. These shaped wheels are similar in nature to a grinding wheel. These shaped wheels can remove a fair amount of material and will help with removing tooling marks but will not denibb your surface nor help with color balance. You will also need a head to match each profile you want to create.
Enter the flap wheel head. Flap wheel heads are designed to be flexible in order to conform themselves to the shape being sanded. This has the unique benefit of very small changes in machine or head settings to accommodate different profiles. When sanding molding with a flap wheel head you must understand that only a small amount of material is going to be removed. Sanding in this way will do no harm to your profile but only a limited amount of tooling marks will be removed. If you start with good tooling and produce a good clean molding cut, the flap wheel sanding will finish sand your product to the point of being ready to apply stain or primer.
The flap wheel sanding process, will denibb your product. This is to remove the small fibers that pop up when sanded in any other way or when any type of chemical or water is applied to the surface of the material. These fibers if not removed will raise up and set in a dried position causing a rough primer or stain and seal coat. This will require additional sanding time being needed between coats to achieve a smooth top coat.
Using a flap wheel head can remove the fibers and therefore reduce the total sanding time in between coats. It also comes with the benefit of ensuring uniform pore opening in the materials. This means the color will be balanced across the surface.
Building your own flap wheel head as an attachment on the out feed end of the molder could be your solution. With today’s availability of inexpensive motors and controllers give it consideration. In most cases a little fabrication work to mount a motor or two with heads on the out feed end of your molder is not difficult to do. You will want to make sure the heads can be adjusted up and down and also the ability to tilt the head can be very useful. Up and down adjustment is a must to accommodate different thicknesses of material. The ability to tilt your heads will help when running a profile that is considerably thicker along one edge than the other.
Just keep in mind the need for more heads as feed rates increase. It will take approximately two heads for up to 20 feet per minute feed rates. Using four heads will get you up to approximately 60-70 feet per minute feed rates and still give good quality sanding. You will also want to make sure the heads are counter rotating. Counter rotation insures that one direction of spin will lift the fibers while the other direction of rotation successfully removes the lifted fibers.
The end result is a better finish that will have needed less sanding between the coats, and less chemicals to reach that result.
Flap Wheels provides a range of tools to help you achieve the best results possible. Take a look today to find flap wheel heads and much more!