Scrollerman
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- 10 Mar 2012
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Adjusting the blade setting from left to right for accuracy is imperative on all scroll saws.
However, adjustment from front to back is down to the individual saw in question and is only important if you cut thicker materials or if your saw is drastically out of allignment.
Why ?
All saws have an action that may, or may not, be perfectly parallel through their vertical travel.
If you are looking to achieve the optimum vertical travel of the blade, you must take into account the vertical deviation the blade takes over it's full stroke.
In other words, you shouldn't just check the vertical alignment in one position of the arms without checking all positions of the arms/stroke.
By checking at various positions, you will get an average of how far out (if any) your set up is for accurate vertical cutting.
So what should I do ?
Check your blade alignment with the arms in the middle position. This should be square to the table.
Then, check again with arms in the top and bottom positions.
You should now have a good idea of the action your blade is taking on it's vertical stroke.
For example, assuming the blade is vertical in mid position, moving the arms to the top position may show it to be out of alignment by 2mm rearward at the top and 1mm forward at the bottom of the blade.
In this case you need to either move the top clamp adjuster by 0.5mm forward or the bottom clamp by 0.5mm backward to equalise the vertical movement.
This would make both top and bottom measurements 1.5mm which is the optimum in my example.
Any adjustments you make for your particular saw should be to equalise any top to bottom difference so they are the same.
There are exceptions to this but I won't go into them here.
Have fun,
Scrollerman
However, adjustment from front to back is down to the individual saw in question and is only important if you cut thicker materials or if your saw is drastically out of allignment.
Why ?
All saws have an action that may, or may not, be perfectly parallel through their vertical travel.
If you are looking to achieve the optimum vertical travel of the blade, you must take into account the vertical deviation the blade takes over it's full stroke.
In other words, you shouldn't just check the vertical alignment in one position of the arms without checking all positions of the arms/stroke.
By checking at various positions, you will get an average of how far out (if any) your set up is for accurate vertical cutting.
So what should I do ?
Check your blade alignment with the arms in the middle position. This should be square to the table.
Then, check again with arms in the top and bottom positions.
You should now have a good idea of the action your blade is taking on it's vertical stroke.
For example, assuming the blade is vertical in mid position, moving the arms to the top position may show it to be out of alignment by 2mm rearward at the top and 1mm forward at the bottom of the blade.
In this case you need to either move the top clamp adjuster by 0.5mm forward or the bottom clamp by 0.5mm backward to equalise the vertical movement.
This would make both top and bottom measurements 1.5mm which is the optimum in my example.
Any adjustments you make for your particular saw should be to equalise any top to bottom difference so they are the same.
There are exceptions to this but I won't go into them here.
Have fun,
Scrollerman
