Cry for help!! -> TS4020 Table Saw Setup...

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Orcamesh

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OK, I know there is a thread in here dating back to 2006 by Scrit about how to tune your table saw so that the sliding carriage is square to the blade, but I am struggling to understand some of the description he used. I am also not having any luck in eliminating the rising teeth from taking a cut as a board is pushed through the blade.

I thought I had this sliding carriage square until I started cutting much wider boards (ply, mdf, etc) rather than solid stock. I have now taken out any shims used between the slide rail mounts and machine body (see below images). So in theory the slide rail is parallel to the machine body (not necessarily the blade). In Scrit's description he talks about having a wide board, cutting it 4 times (each time turning the board so that the previously cut edge is then placed against the sliding carriage crosscut fence), in order to test for square. A 5th cut is then taken along the 1st cut edge tom cut off a narrow strip of say 12mm. I did this with the current un-shimmed slide rail, using a crosscut blade, and I get 0.2mm difference from one end to the other (over about 400mm length). The crosscut blade is burning the face edge as it passes the rising teeth on the nearside of my table. The cut 12mm strip is 12mm at the end which was nearest to the crosscut fence and 11.8mm at the other end furthest from the crosscut fence.

I did not understand entirely the previous step in Scrit's info (Setting the freecut) which was to ensure that there is a small amount of "toe out" to the left of the blade. I tried this dust-cut method and no matter how I shimmed the slide rail relative to the machine body, I always got some cutting by the rising teeth as the job was pushed through. I used a 0.2mm and a 0.5mm shim placed in the slide rail mounting bracket which is at the outfeed end of my table. This I thought would force the sliding carriage to be out of parallel with the blade so that the outfeed end (rising teeth) were less likely to cut the board being pushed through the blade. In Scrit's description for this stage, he says that "if the free cut is too small the rising teeth will make a loud noise & the carriage needs to be adjusted to the right", but if the teeth are making a loud noise then isn't that because they are making a bigger cut? If this is true then why would adjusting the carriage to the right decrease the amount cut, to me this would move the workpiece in towards the rising teeth? When he says "the carriage needs adjusting" I assume that he means that the slide rail should be shimmed at one end and not the other so that the rail is not parallel to the blade? In all steps so far I have not moved my crosscut fence position relative to the sliding carriage on which it is mounted. It is set to zero on the angular scale on the sliding carriage.

Coming back now to the second stage in Scrit's description ("Making the carriage cut bang on"), he talks about "For an outfeed side crosscut fence...", not sure what he means here because as you can see in my images below to me the outfeed side is at the riving knife end of the table and the infeed side is at the end of the table where the cut starts. Or does he mean that the crosscut fence face (against which the workpiece is placed) is placed on the side facing the blade (outfeed side) which is how my fence is positioned and so for an "infeed side crosscut fence" he means that the workpiece is placed against the crosscut fence face which is situated facing the user (i.e. the crosscut fence goes past the blade before the workpiece does during a cut)?

Maybe my 0.2mm cut strip is adjustable now by just fine tuning the angle of the crosscut fence relative to the blade rather than shimming out the slide rail relative to the machine body?

If anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks
Steve
 

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jimi43":18incjoc said:
Hi Mate

The TS4020 slide carriage is quite similar in setup to the TS2000 range all be it better made and THIS GUIDE from NMA may assist you

Jim

Thanks very much Jim! Much appreciated. I will give it a go and see how I get on.

Hope all is well with you?

cheers
Steve
 
Hi Steve

Yup....bearing up really well...back to work almost full time now and the new plumbing seems to be holding....

I'm just hoping they used soldered joints instead of those rubbish push fit things... :mrgreen:

Jim
 

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