First Impressions: Grizzly G1531 Edge Sander

Now that I've had a chance to put it to use, my impressions of this
sander:

Packing:

I was a bit surprised that it wasn't on a pallet, but it is "only" 220
lbs. The two cast iron tables are on the outside of the foam, so it
is very easy to open up the box and take those out to make it more
manageable. Pulling out the foam there's all the support pieces for
the table which weigh a good bit too and the dust shroud which can
easily be removed, at the end of which it becomes light enough for two
to carry.

Assembly:

There isn't a lot to it. Something I hadn't seen before was any place
you were going to be bolting onto the machine those bolts were already
installed, so you don't have to try to figure out which are the right
bolts, though you do have to remove them just to put them right
back.

Build Quality:

For the most part it's well built as far as I can tell at this point.
Runs very smoothly. Where it falls short is in the support of the
main table. The standard for me is when a machine table is locked in
place I ought to be able to try to move it and the entire machine
moves, not the table. Fail, I can easily wobble the table around,
especially at the left side. It seems to be adequate though. The Jet
appears like it would lock securely, but is more difficult to move up
and down.

Operation:

The belt tension and tracking controls work well and easily. Again
it's the main table where the problems are, it's just not well thought
out at all. Half the controls can be done by hand and half require a
wrench. To raise and lower the table you have a big hand wheel, but
in the support right next to it it's locked with a regular bolt, which
I will replace with a 5 star knob.

The axis of rotation of table is a couple of inches below it, so it
doesn't stay the same distance from the belt. The table mounts to two
L brackets with slots in them for the bolts so you can move the
table. However the bolts need a wrench, and are so close to the
vertical part of the bracket that I don't think they can be replaced
with anything else. It may be possible to swap the ones that lock the
angle of the table for those, and use 5 star knobs to lock the angle.
Even so, if you intend to be tilting the table often this is not the
machine for you. I would rather the table didn't tilt at all and was
made more stable than this half-assed setup.

I didn't attempt to mount the second table for contour sanding. This
goes at the end with the idler roller, which gets angled to adjust the
tracking. Which means you'd have to adjust the table every time,
which is mounted on a single post adjusted by two thumb screws. The
other alternative some machines take is to do this at the drive roller
end, which means you have to remove the dust collection, so you're
screwed either way. I don't have access to this area where I have the
machine (the router table is right next to it), but even if I did, I
think I'd stick to the spindle sander.

I talked about this in another thread, but for the sake of anyone
finding this in a google search, the machine and the manual say it
draws 20 amps on 110V. Don't worry about it, it runs fine on a 20 amp
circuit even with other things running on it.

And now onto the good stuff. I got it mainly to sand small cedar
boxes. The box itself is dovetailed and the tops are mitered with
splines. After assembly I need to flatten the top and bottom,
previously done with a hand plane (tricky when there's knots) and
clean up the sides, previously done with a ROS. Now it's zip, zip -
top and bottom are flat. Zip, zip, zip, zip - sides are done. What
was a horrible entire afternoon that I dreaded is now half an hour
and one of the easiest steps in the whole process. I'm happy.