Bosch 12" slider blade wobble "fix"

[Rick Lucrezi]

I have had this blade wobble from the begining. As I mentioned before, the day I got it I used it on a job and was so impressed that I did not notice if the blade wobbled. We one of my guys put it away in the truck, he swung the table all the way over with the fence in. It loaded the blade like that overnite. I noticed it the next day, was certain it damaged the blade. Fired it up and sure enough there was a wobble. I went to the hardware store and got another blade " 139 dollar Freud" stuck it in there and you guessed it, Wobble. I couldnt believe that the loading of the blade could bend the shaft. I planed to take it back, then the same kid who put it away incorrectly made a compund 45 and didnt slide the fence out of the way, and cut right through it. That ended any kind of waranty. So I have been dealing with it. I did some base trim the other day and had to wrap some bullnose corners, the wood was a prestained and finnished oak. With a new blade I could not get a "perfect" cut. That wobble caused an irregular shape in the cove part of the trim. I was not pleased with the outcome of the trim at all, so I took the saw home and took it apart to look for the problem. I made a makeshift braket to hang a dial indicator from to check runout of the shaft. I could only do it running "blade off" and It was plus or minus .001". I atribute some of that to the funky braket. Not enough to cause the kind of wobble I have. After finding notheing wrong there I looked at the spacer that holds the blade. The shaft is a 5/8 arbor and the spacer is machined to 1" for the 12 inch blades. It also is shaped to clear the screws that hold the bearing retainer. I decided to hang a 10 inch blade on there and try it. I had to go get a bronze spacer to put between the blade and bearing retainer to clear the screws, then I used the washers from my table saw, and that was it. I fired it up and no noticeable wobble. So its one or the combination of two things. The spacer which holds the blade is machined badly and holds the blade out of square with the arbor, or the blades themselves have too much flex in them at slow speeds. With 10 inch blades, it cuts smooth and perfect. I only needed to remove the blade stop to get the blade to drop the extra inch, and I built a fence from 1/2 inch MDF so it would allow for a full cut. With out it left a 32nd of material uncut. I am happy with this tool now.

[Trevor Remster]

One day a few years ago, I arrived at the job site to find that thieves had stolen some of our tools, including some of our 12" Makita sliders out of our job trailer. The guys on this job asked me to buy the Bosch 12" sliders as the new replacements because they liked some of the Bosch's features. I bought seven of them that day from my local supplier. Just like you, we can't tolerate blade wobble. Unfortunately, every one of them wobbled. I tried new Forrest blades, resharpened Forrest blades that were sharpened and hand flattened by Forrest, Freud blades, Amana, and who knows what else. I had to conclude that the wobble was from the saw, so I gave up. My supplier had to take 7 opened Bosch sliders back as returns, and we went back to Makitas. No more wobble. I always wondered if Bosch ever addressed this issue. I'm not implying the Makita is a better saw because we have other types of issues with them. We just tolerate the Makita's issues to have a saw without blade wobble. Others may have different experiences, but this has been mine.

[John Sanford]

Can we assume that "the kid" doesn't get to touch the Bosch SCMS any longer? :D

[Rick Lucrezi]

Can we assume that "the kid" doesn't get to touch the Bosch SCMS any longer? :D

Most definately not

[Brian Peters]

He cut into the steel fence (the removable part on the top?) Ouch.. :eek:

[Rick Lucrezi]

He cut into the steel fence (the removable part on the top?) Ouch.. :eek:

Well, its aluminum, but yea, cut off a couple inches.

[Brian Peters]

Oh well that's not as bad as long as it was a carbide blade. But not good by any means. :rolleyes: Hope he learned his lesson.

[James Baker SD]

I have the same Bosch 12 slider and the blade has always wobbled to the extent that I do not use it for precision work. I measured the spacer on the arbor with a Starrett digital caliper and it is definitely smaller than the hole in the blade (both original and Forrest replacement). No amount of tightening the arbor nut removes this. I tried shimming the blade, but didn't have anything thin enough. I tried painting the arbor to increase its size, but the paint scraps off quickly. I haven't had much time for woodworking lately, so I have ignored the saw for over a year, but still hope to find a solution some day.

[Charles Frankenhoff]

yep, same problem. Sent it back to Bosch for repair, they switched the fence (???) but no fix.

Might be the slide bars being slightly out of plane. Bosch has a tech directive out for this fix.

Its really annoying, it makes it into a really expensive framing saw. Nice features, but based on this I wouldn't buy a bosch 5412L - it seems to be a frequent issue for people with the 5412L