Ridgid 13" planer repeat-a-cut

[jxg]

I have read the instruction manual and read people's questions,but I still do not understand how to use the Repeat-a-cut feature.Do I understand it correctly when it steps by 1/8th inch increments.I thought that smaller passes were more favourable.How on earth would anyone make a 1 3/4inch pass?I am obviously off track -somebody help me here?

[wbrooks]

The 1.75" mark is to allow each board to be planed to a finish thickness of 1.75" taking whatever pass depth you wish to use (1/8, 1/16 etc).
I would rather run all my boards through one after the other adjusting the planer after each set until the desired thickness is reached on all boards at the same time rather than doing one board at a time.

[papadan]

You set the repeat setting to the thickness you want. Raise the planer and start running your boards in a normal manner taking 1/32-1/8 per pass depending on the wood being planed. The planer will stop lowering at the set depth so you cannot plane any of your boards more than others. It just prevents mistakes made by guessing.

[cactus]

It works just like described above. It is a cool feature that does take the guess work out of planing another board to match what was already done.

Red

[darius]

+1 to what wbrooks said.
I never considered the feature to be precise enough to count that 1" planed today will mach exactly 1" planed next year, unless I go out of my way to keep the setting unchanged.

I used repeat-a-cut only to ensure the thickness of a batch does not go below certain value. I won't plane each individual board to the desired thickness only to reset the depth and do the same process for the remainder of the boards. The boards are lined up in a queue and I do the round robin thing with them until they are as thick, or as skinny as I need them to be.

At that point I don't really care if my boards are exactly 1" thick, or 127/128", as long as the thickness is reasonably consistent within the batch.

[PurpLev]

I'm like wbrooks and darius - I find it time consuming, and labor intensive to keep spinning the wheels up and down in order to plane each board individually - only to reset height back to plane another board... rinse and repeat... instead I'll get all boards to a similar starting thickness, and then set the thickness to take 1/16" off , and run all the boards through the planer, lower the cutter another 1/16" and run all the boards through it again - this way, the side effect is also that they are all of the same thickness.

however - if you are working on a project, and somewhere in the middle need to go back and plane another board to match a certain thickness - the repeat-a-cut really helps. maybe it's not to the 1/1000th degree - but it's close enough that you don't need to worry about 'aiming'

[darius]

I might add that for the reapeat-a-cut to be acceptable it is important to make sure not dust or shavings build up in on the assembly before cranking the thing down..