The joys of buying a cheap table saw.

[cyberheater]

Bought a cheap table saw on Gumtree which is the same model as this:

Got it home (in the pouring rain) and put it on my bench in my garage to check alignment after checking some youtube vids on how to do that.

1. Is it sitting at 90 degrees. Nope.
2. Is the blade parallel to the mitre slots. A big nope.

Fudge.

I've now discovered the joys of trunnions and how to tweak them. 4 massive allen key bolts that could only be shifted with my biggest allen key and a pipe for leverage.

So spent the next two hours tweaking my trunnions and sorted out my angle stops. I now have a cheap table saw that is perfectly true (or good enough). In short I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
I wish it had come from the factory like that.

I've given up trying to sort out the fence. It's rubbish so I'm going to build my own. I'll post pics as I do.

 

[twodoctors]

How do you tweak it? This is essentially the same as any other budget table, like my Screwfix "Titan". The mitre slot is loose. I think it's straightish...

Which bolt do I turn?

Adrian

 

[novocaine]

you cant titan (see what I did there) the mitre slot as such. you can adjust to parallel by flipping the saw over and tweaking the top, usually 4-8 bolts to mount it to the frame (read steel box). you can alter the width of the mitre fence with a pin punch and hammer by adding punch marks along the guide rail. or make your own.
these adjustments are part of what you pay for on a more expensive saw (along with better materials), your choice, you either do them yourself and save some money or you get someone else to do them and pay the price.

well done for sorting your saw, you'll find it makes life so much easier.

 

[transatlantic]

you can alter the width of the mitre fence with a pin punch and hammer by adding punch marks along the guide rail

Won't last long with aluminium. You're better off making your own rails. But this all assumes the mitre slots themselves are the same width along their length, which most likely is not the case.

 

[novocaine]

no it won't, but short of making your own (which isn't all that hard) it's a start. as there isn't much pressure on the guide rail it will get you a year or so (mines still going after 3 but i don't use it much), but then, I think I also flipped it and removed the T shape to get a better fit.

as to sides being parallel, that can be sorted too, but that's serious level baffoonary that I won't go in to here.

 

[cyberheater]

How do you tweak it? This is essentially the same as any other budget table, like my Screwfix "Titan". The mitre slot is loose. I think it's straightish...

Which bolt do I turn?

Adrian

Mine had three issues and here is how I addressed it.

1. The blade was not parallel to the mitre slot. I think the back of the blade was 2mm close to the mitre slot then the front. I was pretty disappointed to find that out. Anyway I realised that there was 4 big allen bolts holding the blade/motor housing to the table. I eventually loosened these off of a long allen key and a bit of pipe (for leverage) and then set about twisting the assembly until it was aligned. I then slowly tightened up the hex bolts checking that nothing had moved, which it did so more tweaking. Sorted in the end.

2. Blade was not at 90 degrees to the table and when set to 45 degrees angle it wasn't. There was two screws that set the end stops. I had to remove one of the handles to get to one of them. A lot of faffing about and I eventually got the stops in the right place and tightened.

3. The mitre slot was loose so I used a metal punch to punch divets into the thing that slides up and down the mitre slots. It was made of aluminium and the effect was that the sides tended to widen which give it a tighter fit in the mitre slot.

I hope this makes sense.

 

[moosepig]

Good to hear of old machinery being revived rather than skipped. When I was just starting out I bought an old Performance Power TS from Gumtree for £20. Gave it a good clean, adjusted it, added a new Freud blade, made my own fence and zero-clearance insert and it does everything I could ask of it, clean, accurate cuts every time. There's a lot to be said for buying up old stuff like this, the most I could lose was £20 and instead I have something that performs as well as a £many-hundreds unit bought new. These days I have an assortment of newer power tools but that old TS is still going strong

 

[cyberheater]

Good to hear of old machinery being revived rather than skipped. When I was just starting out I bought an old Performance Power TS from Gumtree for £20. Gave it a good clean, adjusted it, added a new Freud blade, made my own fence and zero-clearance insert and it does everything I could ask of it, clean, accurate cuts every time. There's a lot to be said for buying up old stuff like this, the most I could lose was £20 and instead I have something that performs as well as a £many-hundreds unit bought new. These days I have an assortment of newer power tools but that old TS is still going strong

I'm a huge fan of recycling. The reason why I choose this saw was because it had a 2k motor which is quite powerful. More then enough for me.

This is it stripped down and the table levelled which involved undoing the screws that held the top to the base and adjusting the fit before re-tightening them.

I'm going to build my own fence for it and table sides etc... I'll post more pics as I go.

 

[cyberheater]

I've added my own fence and side bits.

The fence is a lot better then the rubbish that came with it.

 

[Bodgers]

You may as well have built one from scratch!



Sent from my MI 3W using Tapatalk

 

[novocaine]

looks good.
might want to add a second face to the fence that only extends to the centre of the blade though, helps limit any kickbacks.