Sliding table alingment

[Bryan Cramer]

I recently purchase a used table saw off of Craigslist. It came with a Delta sliding cross cut table attachment #34-555. I have the fence set at 90 but it still cuts out of square.:mad: The table slides about an 1/8" away from the blade toward the back. The guide rod in the picture is about a 3/32" out of parallel to the bracket. The blade is about .1" out of parallel to the miter slots. Is this the main problem? I can't get it any less. Or should I try shimming the rod parallel?:confused: Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[Bryan Cramer]

:mad:Sorry the pic wont show.:mad:

[Rod Sheridan]

The tolerances for sliding table to blade parallelism on my sliding table saw indicate that over the length of travel measured against a blade at full elevation, the table should be 0.002 to 0.004" farther away at the rear of the blade.

Note that the manufacturer does not recommend that the slider be parallel to the blade.

-Put a dial indicator on your sliding table, fixed in some sort of a block clamped to the table.

-Raise the blade to full elevation

- bring the dial indicator up to the front of the blade so it's 0.1" or more of indication, as close to the teeth as you can get without the dial indicator tip falling in the gullets.

-slowly rotate the blade until the dial indicator reads minimum, then zero it.

- move the sliding table so the dial indicator is now at the back of the blade, rotate the blade slowy until the dial indicator is at minimum, ideally this should be 0.002" larger than the front of the blade.

- adjust sliding table so that you obtain the above distance.

Regards, Rod.

[frank shic]

that slider was a pain in the butt to adjust and it loses its squareness really easily if you accidentally whack the fence just slightly but it worked well for me in the beginning until i moved on to the exaktor so that i could cut full sheets without first breaking them down.

[Brad Shipton]

There was a discussion about a similar sliding device on the woodweb. At the end of the day his wound up in the trash. I see on amazon that it lists for $450. You can hardly buy a precision linear shaft for that let alone the guide. Quality parts is one of the reasons sliding table saws cut properly and cost what they do. I think you should build a wood extension table, and buy a nice mitre gauge like Incra or Jessem.

Good luck
Brad

[Bryan Cramer]

Thanks for the advice. I bought the saw before I joined here so I never asked if it was a good buy. So the sliding table is not a very accurate one? I am building an entertainment center and later another storage cabinet so I thought this was a good investment. The table saw is a good accurate saw. Should I sell the attachment on Craigslist and make an wooden wing to replace it? Let me see if I can figure out why I cant upload pics.

[Bryan Cramer]

188985
The pic loaded:):) Here is the sliding table attachment.
188989
I picked up this saw for $650.:cool: It came with an out feed cabinet with an folding downdraft table extension built in. The saw is a late 70s Delta 34-440 (I think). It has a bigger 220 2hp motor and a Jet EXACTA 40" fence along with a base upgrade. It also came with a miter gauge and a mobile base along with the sliding table. Was this a good buy? (I know I should have joined earlier before I bought it.) Should I try to sell the sliding table for about $200? I like the saw though. It more is accurate compared to my old Sears.

[Tim Janssen]

This article - http://benchmark.20m.com/tools/Unisaw/UnisawSlidingTable/unisaw_slidingtable.html - might be of interest to you!

Tim

[johnny means]

Bryan, first of all I think you did okay price wise. Not a legendary gloat, but a servicable saw with a good fence and the slider attachment.

The first thing I would do is adjust your blade parallel to your miter slots. Some guys will tell you to use a GPS equipped laser guided infini-meter with sub-atomic graduations, but I like to use a combination square. Some guys will tell you to adjust your blade within a bazillionth of an inch of parallel then toe it away from the rip fence exactly 3.14 gadgillionths. I adjust until I can't see a gap at either the front or back of the blade when using my combo square in the miter slot.

I would then adjust my slider so that it slid parallel to the miter slots. I am not familiar with that particular model, but it seems like you might be in the market for some shims.

Now the ironic thing is that all the previous steps have very little to do with your out of square cuts. The only thing accomplished thus far is creating a situation in which the blade won't be binding against the material causing lateral movement as squaring cuts are made. My next step would be to square the miter fence to the sliders direction of travel. I prefer the five cut method with as large a board as possible.

Never mind bad reviews or whatever from guys who couldn't get good results with your set up. I've seen, and gotten, great results with much cruder set ups. Put in the time and study how the slider works, and I bet you'll get spot on results.

[Floyd Mah]

As Johnny mentioned above, be sure that your blade is parallel to the miter slots. I have no problems with my slider's rail not being parallel to the mount. There is also the chance that you might need to do some shimming, but being off by 1/8" would lead me to think that your problem lies elsewhere (not the slider).

I have had that sliding table for many years. It can be made to work relatively smoothly, but there are many adjustments and you have to approach it systematically, else you can't figure out what the last adjustment did. As I remember it, the first adjustment is to make sure that the mount is level with the top of the table saw surface. There''s three large bolts that hold the mount against the table saw (uses the holes that fasten the left wing, which you discard). I slotted the bolt heads so that I could use a flat head screw driver to turn/tighten the bolts thru the tiny holes in the mount. Else it may be difficult to place socket into the hole and fit it square to the bolt axis (holes off-center to the bolts). It may be worth the extra few dollars to buy an Allen head screw since a hex wrench will be easier to use. The link referenced above suggests fabricating a new plate-adapter, but that's a lot of work. You can use some clamps configured as spreaders to jack the mount to be parallel to the table surface. I also used a dial indicator and ran it along the mount to verify the position.

Next, the bar at the bottom, where the large guide wheel runs, must also be adjusted to be parallel to the table surface. This is easier since the bar is light (compared to the table assembly/mount which was adjusted previously. It must be parallel in the vertical and horizontal plane. The horizontal plane matters because the guide wheel will be one of the table assembly pivots and will cause the slider to deviate from being parallel to the table surface. As it turned out for me, there was a slight run-out in the guide wheel which caused the slider to bob very slightly, about a thousandths of an inch, when in use, the period of the bob matched the circumference of the guide wheel.

That's the easy part. Next, you must adjust the bearings that the slider runs on to get the slider to the proper height. Also, you affect the rolling resistance of the slider depending on how tight the bearings are adjusted. The problems that you face when doing this adjustment is that there are four bearings that you manipulate. It's hard to keep track of which set of bearings you are working on. Imagine you are trying to level your dining table by sawing a bit off each of the legs. Every cut you make tips the table in a different direction and possibly lifts another leg off the ground. Each bearing consists of a hex shaft that you can turn with a wrench and a nut that you loosen or tighten to make the adjustment. Further complicating the process is that the two take different sized wrenches. Also on my table, not all the bearings took the same set of two wrenches to make the adjustment, so I was working with three wrenches. The only way to get around the confusion is to determine systematically how to approach your goal (and resist throwing one or all of your three wrenches). Another thing, the table assembly is heavy, especially when it falls off the guide rods and hits you on your back. Be aware that that can happen (it happened to me). Having said all of that, I really dread making adjustments on the slider. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be done too often and it generally works well (aside from the run-out from the lower guide roller).

How do you check your work after all the work? You can use a dial indicator attached to the slider fence and run it along your table saw fence to see how much deviation it measures as you run the slider from front to back. Also, a card clamped to the slider fence and adjust to be 1/64" from the table saw fence will let you see if the distance varies. Also you can see if the fence stays the same distance away from the table surface as you travel from front to back.

Since you might be using the slider to cut plywood or sheet goods, you should experiment with placing the slider fence at the far edge of the slider table to increase your capacity. I was able to trim the ends of 40" windows by doing that. Lastly, I changed the knobs securing the fence from the press-and-turn-levers to cylindrical knobs from Rocklers which were easier to grip and turn.

Lot's of luck. You're going to need it. Keep the shop door closed if you have small children around since they may learn some new words.

By the way, I see that you don't have a splitter mounted on the saw (or a blade guard). If you want another great adventure after adjusting the slider, read my post of a few years ago on how to make a riving knife for your saw. I have the exact same saw as you, so I know that it will work.

[Bryan Cramer]

Thanks so much for your information. Funny some of the upgrades you mentioned were already done by the saw's previous owner.