401100HI 10-Inch Spiral Cutterhead Benchtop Jointer with Cast Iron Tables, 20 TC Inserts, Extra Long 24" Aluminum Fence, Additional 7⅜" Fence Brackets, and a 12-amp Motor

I needed to upgrade from a 6" Grizzly 2 straight knife, cast iron floor model jointer for my home shop. It's a solid machine with a 5' bed, but the 6" width limit, having to remove and sharpen the knives regularly, and with even sharp straight knives often causing tear out on figured wood, I've needed to upgrade for a while. I'm a cabinet maker / finish carpenter by trade, and teach classes in basic woodworking/boxmaking/CNC at a local Rockler now and Woodcraft before that. I have access to 8" Powermatic helical head jointers (Model 60HH) at those shops. That's the standard I compare this Cutech against. Was about to pull the trigger on an 8" helical jointer (Powermatic or Laguna), then used a couple of "helical-style" benchtop jointers and was pretty pleased with the results. "Helical-style" meaning carbide insert knives, but oriented straight rather than skewed, and with fewer carbide knives, like this Cutech. Also had a couple of upcoming jobs that require a good bit of wide (8"-plus) lumber I can't edge join, so I tried this Cutech jointer. Got the 12". More than I'll need 90% of the time, but for an additional $100 over the 10", thought why not.I've been very impressed with the results I'm getting from this jointer, even on highly figured wood. I include a few pix of some highly figured walnut crotch and curly maple lumber I have in my shop now that I ran thru this jointer, and book-matched poplar panels 11 1/2" wide I'm working on now for built-in cabinets. Very clean cuts, comparable to the true helical head jointers I use. Note that this helical-style jointer is not quite as clean. The pix can't show it, but there are small lines between the separate, straight carbide knives of this Cutech machine. Yet the lines are so light that I can't get a photo of them, and a quick hit of 220 grit paper removes the lines right away. That's a really small trade-off for the price and width of this machine.All pix of machined wood are with the machine right out of the box. I didn't need to adjust the bed or carbide insert head at all. I have some good machine calibration equipment (Starrett, Mitutoyo) from my father, a machinist at a GE aircraft engine shop. The outfeed bed was level to the carbide insert head, and the infeed table was coplanar to the outfeed table, within a .0002 tolerance right out of the box. Jeez.The bigger trade-offs are length of material any benchtop machine can handle and the machine height. Pix show the Cutech without extending the support arms, where you can handle lengths up to about 30" comfortably. I made some inserts out of cut-off melamine panels to fit tightly in between the supports when extended to add extra suport. Shown in pix. Routed 5/8" radius groves in the bottom to bring the panels flush with the cast iron tables. Just drop them into the extension arms when I'm working with material up to 5', pull them out to store. Any longer than 5' and I need to add separate support stands on both sides of this benchtop machine for stability.Needed to bring the bed level up to about 33"-34" for comfortable working height, so I put some ply sides in and added doors to a Rockler 16" Rock-Steady shop stand, put on 5" locking swivel casters, added three inches of table-top material, and working height is now just above 33". Very comfortable height, easy to move machine 360 degrees with swivel casters, and more shop storage.About $150 for all those items at retail price. With the cast iron fence accessory, the shop stand, and the 12" machine, I'm in at about $1025. Plus about 3-4 hours for the stand. That's compared to the $3500 retail I was getting ready to lay down for the floor model 8" helical head jointers I was considering.Probably gonna keep the 6" Grizzly jointer for handling 6' and longer material, which I don't joint much in the cabinet work I do, so it may go. But the Cutech on its small stand takes up so little floor room I can handle both in my fairly small shop.I was at first a bit skeptical of Cutech's "only 2 edges" carbide inserts. Other carbide insert machines and tools I've used for the last 10-plus years always have four sides. That's twice the edge changes of Cutech's 2-edged carbide inserts. Cutech's engineering approach, explained in the manual (BTW a very good manual), is to form two straight sides that seat firmly in the rotating head. And the inserts do seat firmly. They are locked in tight. After a couple of months' near-daily use, I'm becoming a convert to Cutech's engineering solution. Even at the full-time cabinet shops I've worked in, I don't think we switch carbide insert edges more than once a year. In a home shop, working to support my side-hustle cabinet jobs, I'll probably get 2-3 years per edge.Can highly recommend this Cutech jointer.Note: also added the cast iron fence for added stability, and its extra mass helps. If there's a knock I have against all benchtop jointers I've used, including this Cutech, it's that the fence adjustment components, formed of (extruded?) aluminum, are not as smooth and solid, and don't lock as tight, as machined cast iron components on floor model machines. Would like to see heavier machined components there, whether cast iron or cast aluminum; would be worth some extra cost.

In......Credible! Had for a month. Jointed dozens of hardwood slabs already and it easily competed with jointers several times its price. Came perfectly squared up. Cast iron table and fence are stable as a rock. I made extension tables to fit over the extension bars and it's literally the best tool in my shop now. Probably have 500 board feet of slabs through it already and the carbide cutters are still razors. Every component, accessory, etc is of extremely high quality materials. Even the supplied spring loaded push blocks are very high quality. Don't buy a full sized jointer. Save the money and get this

---Cutech Model 401100 HCI 10" Jointer with Tungsten Carbide Inserts--Jointer was packaged very well. Every edge of the box was protected inside by heavy duty cardboard angles and the box itself was a heavy duty cardboard. Inside it was packed in fairly thick Styrofoam.You have to assemble and install the fence, but that is not difficult. I got it put together and installed on the machine and checked the tables for alignment with a level and a straight edge. They were aligned perfect or at least as close as I could check them. I checked the squareness of the fence to the top of the infeed and outfeed tables, which I expected to have to adjust, it was dead nuts square. The only thingI had to adjust was the adjustable stops on the two auxiliary fence braces.I left the cutting depth where it was set from the factory, which was a very thin cut probably 1/64 or less. I edge jointed 12 boards on both edges, and they fit together extremely well, could not see the seams once they were glued up. I also face jointed or planed 2 smaller rectangular pieces for use on my CNC machine. They both came out dead flat.My overall opinion is, I could not be happier or more pleased with this purchase. I wish I would have bought this sooner, maybe before some of my other machines. I will never be without a jointer again. And I would buy this jointer again without any hesitation.Having said all of that there is one thing to consider. This is a benchtop machine and by virtue of that fact it is small in length. Even with the extension bars extended it is only about 54" overall. So, you may have some problems with boards over 5 to 6 feet long. That is not a fault of the machine, but simply what I see as the practical limitations of a benchtop machine without some additional appurtenances or possiblyanother person to help hold the work piece. But this machine cost about a third or forth or less of the price of a nice floor model jointer.I only have one concern with this purchase. The labels on the box indicate the model number as 401100 HCI. The HCI indicates Tungsten Carbide Inserts. The Tag on the machine itself shows the model number as 401100 HI. The HI indicates High Speed Steel Inserts. I can't tell by looking at them whether the inserts are Steel or Carbide. The inserts are fairly strongly magnetic, a little more so than I would have expected. That does not mean they are not Tungsten Carbide but that plus the model number on the machinedoes make me suspicious. I know I bought and paid for Carbide inserts and I know a set of 20 Carbide inserts are around $90.00. So, I will contact the mfg. to try and confirm which inserts I actually got.Update - I have had this jointer for several weeks now and I still like it just as much as ever. I hope it stays that way. I called their service dept number about 3 weeks ago during the middle of the day and got a recording telling me to what their business hours were and letting me leave a message. I left my name, number and what I was calling about and so far have not received a call back. It really causes angst on my part to pay approx. $700.00 for an item and then can't even get a call back to answer a simple question in 3 weeks time. At this point I would think twice before buying from this company again.