Shopsmith Forums

Yeah, my 735 is insulated from the floor by the stand and the 3300 is as well. I haven't tried touching the infeed bed then the outfeed, but I can tell you I get a good solid zap when removing wood on the outfeed side especially if I have had to move the dust collector hose when doing it. I am going to try a dragging wire wrapped around the hose AND a ground (maybe a chain) on the 3300 body if I can find something that is not plastic...

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Reading the rest of these threads this morning I realized I need to ground my SS Planer, which I use on my SS which is on rubber wheels and especially in winter when the humidity is down. Last year when I made the hutch I noticed shavings that were not sucked-up into my system and stood on end on the planer table, a sure sign of static electricity. In the future I will run a wire from the table down to the floor. If anything, the static on the table made the shaving hard to clean-up and worked against the vacuum system.

WmZiggy wrote:Reading the rest of these threads this morning I realized I need to ground my SS Planer, which I use on my SS which is on rubber wheels and especially in winter when the humidity is down.

BUT woodn't ya have the wheels UP when using the SS?

WmZiggy wrote:Reading the rest of these threads this morning I realized I need to ground my SS Planer, which I use on my SS which is on rubber wheels and especially in winter when the humidity is down. Last year when I made the hutch I noticed shavings that were not sucked-up into my system and stood on end on the planer table, a sure sign of static electricity. In the future I will run a wire from the table down to the floor. If anything, the static on the table made the shaving hard to clean-up and worked against the vacuum system.

The presence of rubber wheels on the SS is irrelevant. The shopsmith is grounded through the power cord. However unless the planer is in contact with the SS, it would indeed be 'floating'. I think removing paint from the planer 'feet'(depressions) that contact the way tubes would accomplish grounding the planer.

I was a bit amused by an earlier post re grounding the DC by attaching a ground wire to 'a screw'. It also is grounded by the power cord (IIRC).

But both the planer and the DC have plastic parts. When the planer is connected to the DC and connected by a non-conductive tube and wood chips are traveling from the planer through the tube to the DC, a 'tribo-electric'(static if you insist) charge will be created on the surfaces of those plastic parts. If the planer bed etc. is not grounded, that charge will appear on the entire planer. The plastic parts of the DC that create the charge are internal and few un grounded surfaces are external.

I have not experienced this here in damp old KY but can understand this being possible in dryer climates.

The clamps that screw into the bottom of the planer and attach to the way tubes - I put a thin rubber pad on those clamps, effectively insulating the planer from the base. Yes, when the SS is off the wheels that should ground it. I will experiment with grounding the planer table to a way tube and also running it to the floor to see which works best. I like the rubber pad on the clamps because I think it protects the way tubes to some extent. But I had not thought about it insulating the planer! I like this thread, keeps one thinking about stuff you don't give a second thought.

WmZiggy wrote:I will experiment with grounding the planer table to a way tube and also running it to the floor to see which works best.

I want to say I don't think that will work. Because each end of the hose goes into a plastic connector. Thus the hose is insulated from both machines.

Back in another life (early 1960's) I was working in plastic film conversion. We used a zillion rolls of various kinds of plastic film, some very small, some huge. We used a lot of vinyls and others but more polyethylene than anything (lots and lots of all types of plastic bags). In many cases the rolls were mounted on steel shafts with tapered mounts which were held in place with a big old square headed set screw. The shaft in many cases turned in simple wooden bearings. The poly coming off of the roll would often generate so much static that a spark would jump a gap an inch wide from the set screw to the bolt that held the wooden bearing to the steel frame each time the set screw got near the bolt. I spent years so full of static that I would often zap my wife when we touched when I got home.
In some set-ups we would use a metal gold colored tinsel to drag across the film to pull the static off. It was true metal, not the plastic stuff you hang on the tree. I don't know where they acquired it but it was some industrial supply place. Some of the guys would tie a piece of it around their ankle and let it lay on the floor.

I wasn't done with my message but someone who also lives here handed me a bowl of bean soup and some cornbread.
I also wanted to mention that we deal with static on the farm too. I learned as a child that when I was running an implement with a big flat belt that I needed to either hang a chain from the tractor to the ground or lean the tractors steel drawbar from the ground to the tractor to avoid serious shock when operating the controls on the tractor. BTW, that was never a problem back when tractors were on steel wheels.
In more recent times another static problem kicked out. Self propelled combines and similar machines run a lot of belts and move a lot of materials through them. They also run on big rubber tires. Zapping is not a problem but static builds up and holds a lot of dust on the windows to the point that you spend half of your time brushing it off to see. It was found that dragging a short piece of chain would cut back on the problem a lot. I think it was discovered by accident as a lot of guys started attaching a piece of heavy chain to the combine's rear axle so that in muddy ground they didn't have to crawl in the mud under the back to pull the stuck combine out of the mud. They just found the end of the chain out the back and hooked the tow chain to it. The cleaner windows was just an extra benefit...


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beeg wrote:I want to say I don't think that will work. Because each end of the hose goes into a plastic connector. Thus the hose is insulated from both machines.

I have the hose grounded on the outside with thin wire, but realized the planer itself is not grounded as the clamps to the way tubes are insulated as I glue a thin rubber pad to them. I didn't like the metal-on-metal with the way tube planer clamps. Thus, a thin wire to the floor should drain static that causes planer shavings to "stick" to the table. I haven't tested it out yet, but will let you know.