Helical vs spiralcutterhead planer

Helical blades are better by some measures than straight blades. Whether the difference is enough to justify a retrofit on a planer like the DW735 depends on what you're doing with the machine. The quality of helical blade retrofits is also very important. Close tolerances and fit are obviously important on any planer head that uses fixed (as compared to adjustable) blade positioning, but it's absolutely critical on helical heads.

Berkshire Precision Tool, LLC is a privately held, US manufacturer of performance and applications specific, carbide cutting tools. We are headquartered and manufacture in the Berkshires in Pittsfield, MA.We market our products under the Data Flute brand. Data Flute is recognized as an industry leader in precision, performance carbide end mills.

Helical vs spiral cutter headreddit

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As I understand it, one of the big advantages is that the blade actually slices diagonally across the wood instead of straight into it.

Helicalcutterhead Planer

I've also seen claims that the full width of a straight knife hitting the wood slows the cutter head down "significantly" which the motor then needs to compensate for by reaccellerating the whole head, while the small knives have much less impact on the cutter head speed, allowing it to run more smoothly. I'm not sure how much credence to put into this last claim, but I've seen it made in more than a few YouTube videos by people who seem to (in general) know what they're talking about.

This also gives an advantage of making it easier to push the cutting edge through the wood. When hand planing, it makes the work less tiring (important since it's human powered and humans get tired). I've see claims that this makes it easier on the electric motor driving your planer, too, since small portions of the blade are contacting the work piece at one time instead of the full width of the blade.

Spiralcutterheadvsstraight knives

Well, I can say that they do work well. My dad bought A helical planer and most of the time you don't have to do any sanding when it's done.

I have a DW735 with Byrd helical head that I use as a finish planer. I like it. It's great for final planing of gnarly woods. However, it reduced the cutting capacity of my machine to 1/32" per pass (OK for a finish planer, but it'd be a pain if you're doing much milling to thickness of rough lumber) due to the Byrd head having a slightly smaller cutting radius than the standard DeWalt head. But if I were buying a planer to be the only one in my shop, I would probably take the money the upgrade head cost, and put it toward getting a wider, heavier, slightly more "industrial" straight knife planer.

When hand planing, there is a very strong, natural tendency to put the plane at an angle across the direction of planing, not square to the edge of the board. This is accomplishing the same thing as the helical head. The blade can slide into the wood and cut a little bit at a time, making a smoother entry into the wood than if you try to push the entire cutting edge directly into the wood all at one shot.

Helicalplanerheadfor Dewalt 735

The physics I believe actually has more to do with the many overlapping small blades, taking out smaller chips in each pass, at staggered intervals.

Assuming that this design is indeed superior (as opposed to being simply marketing bullshit), could someone explain the physics/mechanics of why it works better?

From what I read, it would seem like this design is fundamentally superior to that of a three full-width blades. For context/example, I have a DeWalt DW735 planer. For the purpose of this question, we should put aside the poor quality of the blades that come with this planer (there are HSS or carbide replacement blades for it).

Granted a negative is you have a LOT of little blades to rotate when you need a new sharp edge. Though if you get a chip, you can just rotate the couple that chipped and continue on. You also have 4 sides to each blade to be used.