Lewis Cobb
11-17-2009, 10:09 AM
Right, so I am running the dial indictor along the blade and fence with my handly little wooden jig I made for alignment and discover that the UHMW faces on the Bies. Style fence on the PM2000 are anything but flat. I am not so sure it's a big issue and the tech service guys at PM are of the same opinion.
A bit of tinkering over this last weekend revealed that the steel tube is pretty flat - say +/-0.002" - hard to get a good reading as the mill marks where it's machined "flat" cause the needle to bounce around a bit. I also made sure that the holes in the steel tube are big enough to cause at least a little "slop" in the fence when it's slid onto them - so that it's not binding and twisting any when the bolts are tightened down.
It appears that the bolting down of the UHMW faces, causes them to buckle and go "wavy" in between the mounting points. I read bang on 0.000" at the mounting points (well, maybe +/-0.001") but in between I can get +0.005" and -0.004"
A bit of digging with the search function reveals that I am not alone in this discovery but I could not seem to find any solutions. In fact, I came across one posting a while back where a fellow has a Bies. fence with the same wavy problem and those faces are much harder to replace than the accufence ones.
I am not sure this can be corrected with shims as I tried a bit of shimming here and there with only moderate success.
Anyone have this issue and come up with a better face for their Accufence, or perhaps it's just not worth the trouble ?
Thanks,
Lewis
A bit of tinkering over this last weekend revealed that the steel tube is pretty flat - say +/-0.002" - hard to get a good reading as the mill marks where it's machined "flat" cause the needle to bounce around a bit. I also made sure that the holes in the steel tube are big enough to cause at least a little "slop" in the fence when it's slid onto them - so that it's not binding and twisting any when the bolts are tightened down.
It appears that the bolting down of the UHMW faces, causes them to buckle and go "wavy" in between the mounting points. I read bang on 0.000" at the mounting points (well, maybe +/-0.001") but in between I can get +0.005" and -0.004"
A bit of digging with the search function reveals that I am not alone in this discovery but I could not seem to find any solutions. In fact, I came across one posting a while back where a fellow has a Bies. fence with the same wavy problem and those faces are much harder to replace than the accufence ones.
I am not sure this can be corrected with shims as I tried a bit of shimming here and there with only moderate success.
Anyone have this issue and come up with a better face for their Accufence, or perhaps it's just not worth the trouble ?
Thanks,
Lewis