Jet JWDS-2550 Drum Sander Review

This is a quick video of the Jet JWDS-2550 drum sander. I just purchased this from Beaver Industrial online in April 2020 and it was 15% Off with free shipping. It normally retails for just over $2,000 and with the discount it was under $1800. The cabinet was damaged during shipping and Beaver gave me the option to have another one sent or they would take $150 off the price. I opted for the discount.

This unit ships in two boxes. One is the sander and the other is the cabinet. The sander came pretty much fully assembled except for the hose bracket and height adjustment handle. The base only needed to have two knobs installed that are used to lock the caster wheels.

My wife helped me lift the sander on to the cabinet and its secured with about 6 bolts. The assembly was quick and pretty easy. The directions were ok with the exception of how to use the table adjustment knob The benefit of this machine is that you can run work pieces up to 50" through it. When you are using this feature when you do the 2nd pass you need to use the adjustment knob to take the table out of parallel to prevent having a crown. The procedure to accomplish this was not noted in the instructions.

I ran a cutting board through the sander and it came out great. Next I ran a select pine cabinet top through it. It came out dead flat! Next I ran a black walnut desk top through. The walnut top kept tracking on an angle and on one side the belt wasn't pulling it through every time. I adjusted the infeed / outfeed tables to be about a 1/16th lower than the belt and I will see if that helps.

The dust collection is very good on this machine . I have a Powermatic PM1300 that is piped through the shop with 4" sewer pipe. I didn't notice any dust in the air and there was just a very small amount on the conveyor belt.

I have only had this machine a short time but so far I really like it. I will need to fine tune a few things and get used to it but that's usually the case with new equipment.