Delta Contractor Saw Question

[Tony Bilello]

All of a sudden I noticed that my blade is not parallel with the miter slots. The front of the blade is .01" closer to the fence side than the rear of the blade. When working cut-off's on the left side of the blade, I can hear the rear of the blade making contact as the piece is passing it. It is so slight, I can barely feel the difference.
I want to re-align my blade and I couldnt find any adjustment screws. Does anyone here know how to do this?
Monday I will call Delta but hope you can help me first.
Thanks in advance.

[Cary Falk]

You have to loosen up the trunions and change it from there. I would get a set of PALS from InLine Industries to help out. It was the best $20 I spent when I had a contractor saw.

[Tony Bilello]

What are PALS?

[Cary Falk]

They are a device you install on the rear of the table saw trunion that allows you to easily and precisely adjust the trunion. You use a allen wrench instead of a rubber mallet. Follow the link http://www.in-lineindustries.com/saw_pals.html

[Tony Bilello]

I will give them a call Monday.
I have no idea why it is all of a sudden out of alignment.

[Alan Schwabacher]

http://www.in-lineindustries.com/saw_pals.html

PALS are shown in the link. You can get them at Woodcraft too.

Better than Delta's instructions are those in books by Kelly Mehler (The Tablesaw Book), John White (Care and repair of shop machines), and Mark Duginske (Mastering woodworking machines. This one is older than the others.)

[Cary Falk]

I have no idea why it is all of a sudden out of alignment.

Did you happen to tilt the blade? Tilting the blade on a contractor saw tends to rack the trunion and put it out of alignment.

[Tony Bilello]

Yes I did tilt it, which I rarely ever do

[Dan Friedrichs]

Here's a good link showing how to do it:
http://www.newwoodworker.com/algntruns.html

It's actually not hard at all if you have a dial indicator, and IMHO, not worth spending money on PALS.

[glenn bradley]

You've gotten some good links and info here. I'll just add that when I had a contractor saw, PALs were the best $20 I ever spent. I also added machined pulleys and a link belt as described. The next best thing I did to improve performance was to toss a plastic wrapped 90lb bag of cement in the base. The added massimproved the overall feel and accuracy of the saw once I couldn't push it around ;-)

[Tony Bilello]

This gives me enough info to get uit right again. I wonder why the Delta manual didnt show this info?

[Byron Trantham]

All of a sudden I noticed that my blade is not parallel with the miter slots. The front of the blade is .01" closer to the fence side than the rear of the blade. When working cut-off's on the left side of the blade, I can hear the rear of the blade making contact as the piece is passing it. It is so slight, I can barely feel the difference.
I want to re-align my blade and I couldnt find any adjustment screws. Does anyone here know how to do this?
Monday I will call Delta but hope you can help me first.
Thanks in advance.

A .001"? Are you kidding? A .001 of an inch is right on! Actually some of us run the fence OUT .003" to help not binding (kick back). If you are really off this amount keep on cutting, you're fine. :D

[Tony Bilello]

It is out .01 (1/100th).
You can hear and feel the difference.
I would be happy with .003

[Dan Friedrichs]

Yeah, 0.01" is way more than you should want. With the loosen-the-trunnion-bolts/tap-with-a-hammer/tighten/repeat process, you should be able to get it to within 0.002" (or so) within a half-hour (or so :)).

The PALS may be worth it to you if you find the process difficult. The big problem is that tightening the bolts will move everything quite a bit. I always loosen the bolts just enough so that things will move, make adjustments until it reads close to perfect, then tighten all the bolts, and see how far off it is. Then, loosen all the bolts again, and readjust accounting for the amount that you know it will move upon retightening the bolts.

It's not a fun job, but if you're careful with moving the saw around, it's a job you shouldn't have to do very often....

[Archer Yates]

I purchased a set of Contractor Saw PALS. I tried a dry fit before applying thread lock compound. The Allen screw will barely reach the Trunnion even with the lock nut backed out all the way to the head of the Allen screw. I can't see where this will have any effect on my saw. What is going on here?Can you help?

[Howard Acheson]

>>>> I can hear the rear of the blade making contact as the piece is passing it. It is so slight, I can barely feel the difference.

That is perfectly normal with a well aligned blade. After all, the kerf is exactly the same thickness at the front of the saw as it is being cut as it is at the rear of the saw as the blade rotates through it. It's going to microscopically touch. In addition, the blade tips are going at over 100 MPH. The wind created will cause a slilght vibration to be imparted to the ZCI.

If your blade and fence are 0.002" or less, you are good to go.

[Ben Davis]

You might just need longer allen screws. Ace hardware or your local hardware store should stock this kind of stuff in every concievable size you could want. I've not had the same luck with the borg stores. I have the blue borg down the road from me and every time I try to buy hardware there I wish I would have driven the 20 minutes to Ace.