What's the Purpose of a Wide-Belt Sander?

SCM Sandya Wide Belt Sander

Wide-belt sanders are used for finishing flat panels mostly for the woodworking industry, but they can also be used in some plastic and metal sheet applications. These sanders generally work with panels between 24” or 610mm and 53” or 1350mm in size although there are specialized machines that accommodate panels outside of this range. Wide-belt sanders configurations range from a single head to multiple heads - one to four heads are most common. By adding more heads, it is possible to achieve finer component finishing by placing the finer grit belts onto the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th heads.  This allows the finer finish sanding to happen with only a single pass through the machine.  Similar results are otherwise achieved by doing multiple passes through one or two head machines and then increasing the grits for the second pass. Sanders (wide belt) basically have two types of heads: 1) rollers are usually more aggressive and generally used for to remove stock; 2) pads provide a larger contact area and, therefore, typically provide a higher quality finish. One of the most  common configurations is a two-head wide-belt sander with one roller followed by one pad.

Popular wide-belt sanders include:  Biesse, Boere, Cantek, Costa, DMC, Hessemann, Kundig, Sandingmaster, Sandmax, SCMI, Tagliabue, Timesavers, and Viet.
 
Interested in a top-quality, pre-owned wide-belt sander for your operation? Call Contacts Machinery at 1-866-514-0890 or visit the used woodworking equipment site for a large selection of used wide-belt sanders.