Axminster TS 200 Silding table mod

[Bionic Bulldog]

Hi, Pretty new to this forum so hi to all. not sure if this would be of interest to anyone.

i bought an axminster saw recently along with the sliding table attachment. although happy with the saw itself (apart from a few niggly things) the sliding table attachment was a bit of a let down. according to the axminster site, it should be able to cross cut 600mm, well... it can if you have the slide bed installed as far forward as you can, but then i found that mitring on the slide became very difficult due to the positioning of the slide arm. to be honest, not sure how to explain it.., but guess anyone who has one of these will know what i am talking about (unless i am missing something obvious and it isnt hard)

well i had an idea, which would allow me to easily move the table bed without all the hassle of the screw adjustments underneath. attached some photos(if i done it right) of my what i originally intended as my dummy run to see if it would work. actually worked lot better than i thought and other than a few minor tweeks ( carriage bed is 1.5mm higher than table at present and just needs height shimmed down slightly) i reckon that i probably wont change it now.

basically i cut a 18mm MDF sheet and mounted it across the two brackets and bolted it to the brackets using the existing M6 nuts welded on the brackets. Another MDF sheet was cut which was mounted to this sheet on top between the two brackets. i then used 2 Aluminium 20mm u channel screwed to the wood which sat in the two 20mm channels on the sliding table bed. was surprised that these fit so well, got no movement at all and was rock solid. once i threw on some vaseline the bed moved back and forth great.

then made two brackets which had two m6 bolts which sat in the 10mm channel of the bed and these went all the way through both 18mm sheets to a wood strip and 2x m6 nuts put on. the wood strip also has a 8mm bolt which when tighten pulls down on the two bolts holding the sliding table in place.loosening the 2 bolts aloows the table to be slid back and forth without effecting the alignment to the blade. do need to buy some knobs for these bolts, but so far have found just tightening by had has bee sufficient.

anyway thats it, dont know if this has been done before as i couldnt find anything on it, so thought i would share my little mod.

 

[marcros]

interesting mod. well done.

 

[JakeS]

i bought an axminster saw recently along with the sliding table attachment. although happy with the saw itself (apart from a few niggly things) the sliding table attachment was a bit of a let down. according to the axminster site, it should be able to cross cut 600mm, well... it can if you have the slide bed installed as far forward as you can, but then i found that mitring on the slide became very difficult due to the positioning of the slide arm. to be honest, not sure how to explain it.., but guess anyone who has one of these will know what i am talking about (unless i am missing something obvious and it isnt hard)

I know what you're talking about, certainly! Along with the added annoyance of the sliding table rail being exactly in the way of the recommended safe operator's position relative to the blade, so if you have it pulled back for cross-cutting anything wider than 30mm, you have to lean over the saw to reach when ripping or stand in a less safe position... or in my case get fed up, loosen the bolts and slide the rail out of the way and lose all of the careful alignment you'd previously done.

If I'm understanding correctly, the alignment-consistency part of this design is managed with the 20mm U-section aluminium, and so long as you get those parallel to the blade and at the right height you should be able to slide the rail back and forth along them with no problems? Was there anything particular about how you went about getting the alignment right for those in the first place?

 

[Bionic Bulldog]

HI

bearing in mind that this idea came to me and I knocked it up in a couple of hours, so some things probably could be done a little better, and some people might have suggestions for improvement, but I wanted to try the concept first, with whateve I had kicking around the workshop not really expecting it to work so well. But yes, your reply is exactly what I was getting at. now I can slide the table all way forward out of the way in seconds, or remove completely when not in use without all the constant messing with bolts. plus I can now do 600mm cuts and if need to mitre, push table forward a bit until mitred wood end would actually get pass the blade.

yes the Two 20mm aluminium channels is what I expected to keep the bed running true to the blade, and were a perfect fit for me and the Vaseline made them slide great without any play at all. Not fully set this up yet due to knowing that I would probably have to take it apart again to losing that additional height that the carriage bed has at the moment to the table saw bed. The lower 18mm sheet which bolts to the underside of the existing brackets has the bolt holes through the wood drilled at 9mm to allow some movement to allow adjustment for this. Briefly the way I put it together:-

bolted lower section on to brackets. cut top 18mm section to approx. same width and before attaching to lower section, installed the u channels on to it. I then installed the top section on to the lower 18mm sheet by sliding the carriage bed on to the u channels, then using tape measure made sure the sliding bed was approx. 50mm away from the table saw bed, I then screwed the two pieces of wood together. once screwed down I then slid the carriage bed forward and back to mark the centre of the two 10mm channels, then drilled two 9mm holes through both section of wood front and back and installed long M6 bolts (head above with nut below). one thing I found is that best to not tighten nuts on both sides of the lower clamp. just put the M6 bolt through it and install two nuts below the bracket and tighten together. this leaves the two bolts nice and loose when the M8 bolt is lossened allowing the table to slide freely. tightening both sides of the bracket made the M6 bolt two rigid and made the bed hard to move unless you were 100% accurate on the drilling of the holes. the lower bracket simply has two 9mm holes and an 8mm nutsert hammered into it.

once all that was done I could then loosen the 4 bolts holding the assembly to the bracket and make the minor adjustments to allow the carriage to slide parallel to the blade. once that done then I can set the arm on the carriage to be 90 degree to the blade as well. not sure yet how I am going to lose the extra 1.5mm ish, I might try to shim the actual brackets down first by putting a washer on each of the 4 bolts holding the brackets to the actual table bed to lower the brackets.

not great at explaining as don't really know all the correct names for stuff, and just make things in the way that feel right and keeping it simple at the same time. can take moe photos of the whole thing taken apart and post them if people interested and my description not clear.

Additional: one thing I should mention is that I had 4 of these 20mm aluminium channels kicking around, all bought from B&Q at the same time some time ago. 3 of them were perfect fit, with one being much to tight and couldn't be used. guess there is a slight tolerance when they are manufactured. would suggest not ordering from online source and take you caliper down to B&Q or elsehwere and make sure the ones you get are ones that fit