Customer Reviews

Powermatic 1280101C PM2700 Shaper, 5HP 1PH 230V

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Recently bought this shaper. Nice machine, love the casters that raise/lower, love the digital readout.

Now the BUT:

1. The fence. Can NOT get them to stay lined up. Finally had to bolt a pc of 1x3 across both fences to make one continuous fence...otherwise, you start to run a piece of work, and it either catches the tip of the offbearing fence, or once it leaves the infeed fence, you get a nick in the work pc. And yea, I know they have bolts behind the aluminum fence....just never could get the fence alinged perfectly.

2. Lower dust port.

I was running a raised panel cutter, and after 5-6 panels, the area under the cutter would jam up with chips, even though I had a 4" hose hooked to both rear dust ports. WELL, lo and behold, the lower port does have a 4" diameter flange....BUT when you look inside, they have this fool inner pc that has the opening choked off to a rectangle about 2" wide by 4" tall...??????.....so I took that off, and surprise.....the collection "pan" under the cutter actually has a CHUTE that lets chips fall down around the motor ! ( Which has NO way to connect a DC hose....you have to open the acess door and clean out by hand )

WHAT kind of idiot designs a pan like that ? I finally just jammed my dust collector hose back in the opening, leaving the port flange and whatever that other pc is OFF.....worked a lot better.....ran the rest of my panels without the pan under the cutter jamming up with chips. VERY poor design, IMHO. Guess I'll be taking the top off the machine, removing that pan and head to a sheet metal shop to get a better version made.....one that actually works.

I bought this shaper about 6mo ago. I was sold on the digital readout,thinking it would save me time when changing cutters.The digital readout was a dissapointment. The height adjustment does not have a true positive stop when lowering down, making it extremely difficult to set up new cutters quickly and makes the digital readout pointless. The digital readout will change readings randomly like it's possessed,but the spindle hieght will not change,again making the digital readout pointless.The next thing that sold me was what looked like the state of the art fence compared to the competition.It had micro adjustments on the fence worm gears on the whole head etc. This is the worst fence system I have ever used. It does not stay parallel to the miter slot and forget adjusting it.The adjustment is behind the fence and is near impossible to get it within .010 . Then after you use the shaper a few times the fence is all out of wack again and your back to more down time trying to adjust the fence.I have since then had the fence modified by a machinest just so it will stay square.I had a wire come loose in the switch/control box that caused a headach and more down time. The tables are not ground as nice as other machines causing you to have to wax them very fequently.I bought a 1 1/4 spindle that was out of balance and scared me half to death when I started the machine.The built in castors seemed cool but they only raise the machine like 3/8. If you have any imperfections or tapers ( like a drain )in your floor you will get this machine hung up.The dust collection set up is very poor. I have a 5hp dust collection system on this unit and chips are flying everywhere.The miter slot had a curve in it. Any jig you used in the miter slot would get stuck in the middle. I had to have the miter slot ground out.When this machine arrived it did not even come with a power cord.Do not buy this machine unless you like poorly designed equip, bad customer service,and hours of downtime in the shop.Powermatic is not what it used to be.I own a custom furniture shop and need machines I can count on to make me money.... I will never buy or recommend Powermatic ever again!!