Cutech 40200HC-CT 13" Spiral Cutterhead Planer W/Carbide Inserts - Professional Model

I bought this planer after researching and reading multiple reviews. Easy to set up out of the box - attach a knob, a dust chute and make sure tables were aligned properly. To test it I ran a bunch of 1" rough cut spalted oak through. The planer performed well.The positive stops for various sizes worked well and were highly accurate. The snipe lock feature worked well, but I still got snipe occasionally. This was probably due to operator error when feeding as I am not a planer pro.Others have noted the design flaw in the dust chute with no way to attach the bottom edge. This didn't really matter to me as I don't have dust collection in my small shop and I remove the chute after use to save space when storing. The chute prevents the outfeed table from fully closing. A couple of well placed screws installed by the user would fix the mounting issue.After feeding a ton of spalted oak I ran a test piece of softer pine to see how the carbide knives held up. The pine came through nice and smooth.To summarize - this is a great planer. Features work as advertised and quieter than my old Craftsman 13" planer.

Granted, this product may work fine for small projects and finished milled lumber but for heavy use it has a design flaw, in my opinion. I purchased this product to spec mill 650 board feet of cypress and though the product is just a few months old, it had 2 catastrophic failures, the gear box!! Inside the gear box the drives in indeed and outfeed rollers are a series of sprocket's, different metals with thee main sprocket composed of aluminum. Twice during this project that sprocket became completely stripped of all teeth, leaving the machine completely inoperable.First time I replaced the gear box under the manfactures warranty but due to time restraints and the difficulty of trying to reach an actual person at Wahuda Tools (name of the company now) I decided to just order the part online and 2 day air it. Placed the order on Monday June 23,2020 and paid the extra for 2nd day air due to tight deadlines. For accuracy, the order was placed late in the evening which means the product should be shipped the following day Tuesday June 26,2020 and arrive Thursday June 28, 2020. Did not receive it on Thursday so checked the order and discovered the product did not ship until June 28th or 29th! Even thought they say they will send and email when product ships, my experience is they don't and you may receive that email "long" after product has been received. Today is Monday June 29th, 7 days after i placed the order and they still charged me for 2nd day air. I am not used to having to leave phone messages for a sells department, especially during business hours, as I have a business to manage and heavy workload to maintain, don't like other companies making their problems my problem so---- this warrants a very candid and first review, of which more of my valuable time has been wasted on this product.Customers reserve the right to be customers, if the fulfillment centers are void of a sells department with something more than a mandated messaging system, leaving technical issue in a state of "placing our professional business entities on hold while waiting a long period of time for a returned phone call", disintermediation towards other manufactures may be the better proprietor's business solution. At the very least!!!: A vendor should always promptly notify their customers of issues and/or externalities they may impact the efficiency of their customer business process. If this is not important enough of a matter, perhaps the customers are not either.THIS REVIEW/OPINION IS OF THE Cutech 40200HC-CT 13" Spiral Cutterhead Planer W/Carbide Inserts - Professional Model

The media could not be loaded.  I was planing black walnut out of the box within minutes of unpacking and reviewing instructions. Very easy setup - There was a knob to put on with an Allen wrench provided and I made sure the in / out feed tables were level (which they were). Hooked up to the 4" dust port and started running boards through. Effortless depth adjustment, smooth finish on the boards with little to no snipe and excellent dust collection. We'll see how reliability plays a factor long term but for the price and it being my first planer, overall I'm impressed. And as always, make sure you have good ear and eye protection.

Update: 2/22/2020: one of the roller sprockets broke in half today. Emailed tech support since it’s only 6 months old. Kinda of disappointed but hopefully they will resolve this issue quickly and easily.9/23/19I’m an entry level, 4 year, self-guided hobbyist woodworker. I make custom orders for customers but only complete 5-6 projects per year. This is my second planer, the first being a Jet. Overall, I am very impressed with this Cutech planer. Set up was super fast, made minimal adjustments to square the feed tables. I’ve ran 6/4 cherry, 8/4x10 ponderosa pine, and 6/4 sycamore without any issues on normal settings. Been using this planer for a few months now, so I decided to push the limits and ran 10/4x12 ponderosa pine at 1/16” cut depth, and I started to get tear out. The snipe lock is excellent. Almost zero snipe when cutting at 1/32”, and no snipe at 1/64”. My only complaint is the dust collection port. It doesn’t seal 100% so wood shavings manage to blow out. I just sealed it with some masking tape and it pretty much solved that problem. The helical head makes changing blades so easy it’s ridiculous. Worth every penny. I would classify this as a “great” planer for the its price point and a great investment for someone like me who wants to use it for a decade then maybe upgrade to a larger machine. You can make very nice items, but again it’s a portable, 13” planer, so you have your limits. I would recommend this to anyone who asked, that’s for sure.