The machie arrived after a three week backorder delay. But it was a new item and there were a lot of orders.
There are several problems with the design of this sander:
The feed table height adjustment is almost ridiculous. Essentially you loosen two set screws on a nut-collar that then allows you to turn the collar and move the table up or down, you have to do this to each of the four corners indepenently and the way the machine is designed, you can't get to the set screws on the two inside collars.... ugh. Ever since I have had it, I can't get the feed belt to track straight, after about 30 minutes of operation, I have to adjust it a little to go back the other way before it starts destroying the feed belt on the side posts.
I over loaded the motor once (easy to do) by taking a little too much off. It popped the built in circuit breaker and I discovered that it melted the power switch in the process. Ugh. Unbeleivably, the switch is rated at a lower current than the circuit breaker is. Two months after I called, Grizzly sent me a new switch. During that time, the power cord doubled as the switch. The pressure plate that keeps the wood down on the drive belt is another bear to adjust. Difficult at best. Unfortunately, if the pressure on the front plate is higher than on the rear plate, then when the wood comes off the front plate, the lower pressure on the rear plate will cause the drum to dig a nice groove all the way accross your piece. Takes a bit of trial and error to get it right and you have to take the dust hood off to adjust it. Ugh again. Did I mention dust? Ooops! The built in dust collector doesn't work. Period. For some reason, hooking a shop vac with 6.5 hp to the outlet only helps a little, the dust collection just isn't designed right or something. You WILL have a shop full of dust when using this baby.

All of that said, I can get some pretty nice finishes off of this machine after I have learned how to adjust it, and I keep on top of it. For the price, it is great. I really didn't want to drop 2G's on a sander.

I purchased the Grizzly drum sander, GO458, based on my satifaction with a Grizzly 14 inch band saw I have had for a few years. The drum sander came with an extension bracket for the feed belt badly bent not because of a shipping problem. I requested a new one from Grizzly and I had it within a week of noftifying Grizzly. Having read some of the reviews of other drum sander owners, I believe that this machine has some of the problems that may be common to many drum sanders. For example, the feed table tracks off a straight line and is a little tedious to adjust. If one takes the time to adjust the tension on the feed belt using the extension brackets first, the secondary adjustment can be made a little easier. The main problems I encountered early on have been snipe and burnng of boards. As I read other reviews, these seem to be common problems with other comparable drum sanders. I eventually purchased an after market 5 roller extension table to keep the wood level as it came out of the feed table. (I was able to get a nice finish on a 50" long by 17" wide board recently.) Early on I burnt a piece of wood by trying to take off too much with one pass or the board might have been uneven in thickness. Anyway, the feed table stopped. (The drum sand paper also burnt and needed replaced.) It is evident that the wood must feed in at a constant rate of speed and thus it takes a little patience to move the feed table up to an appropriate position. Other woodworkers who have drum sanders have complained in reviews about their feed table not being parallel to the sanding drum. This has not been a problem so far with the Grizzly. It is a heavy machine (300 lbs) with few plastic components. Some time spent with adjustments, and some patient practice, will make this product very useful to the woodworker, and the price is very competitive with other drum sander manufacturers. I am however, a little curious as to why Grizzly does not include this product in their advertisements in woordworking magazines. It can only be found on their web site and on Amazon.com.