Laguna 14SE bandsaw problem [rant]

[Bernie Kopfer]

I have owned a Laguna 14SE bandsaw for several years and use it intermittently mostly for curved cuts. Recently I did some major re-sawing and the smoothness of the cut really bothered me. I have never thought the cuts I made were very smooth but they were acceptable, and after all this bandsaw is always highly rated so it must be my setup or blade selection. The cuts are usually rough and the saw sounds like it gallops. So I went to friend who does a lot of bandsawing and his cuts were much smoother on his Grizzly with the same blade and wood. I figured the saw was ready for a full tune up so i bought new tires and got out the manual and got out Mark Duginske's bandsaw book and got ready to do battle. First thing I decided to check was to see if the wheels were coplanar since i noticed the blades on the lower wheel never sat centered on the crown like the upper but always a little forward. Had to make a custom straight edge because the wheels sit inside the cabinets. Put on a big blade, tensioned it properly, and put the straight edge on the wheels. Or I should say I attempted to. The lower wheel was out of plane 3/8ths of an inch!!! Couldn't be! Not on a Laguna! So I reset everything and rechecked. Yup, 3/8ths out of plane, but parallel, which explains why the blades have not come flying off. The manual, such as it is, gives no instructions about coplanar adj and after examining the saw closely, this european model does not have the capability to be adj by putting washers behind the wheel. Instead the upper shaft assembly has to be loosened and can be moved in or out. A major pain and there is not 3/8ths of adj possible. Called Laguna. Service rep said he could help. Kept asking me what model, kept trying to tell me how to tension the blade and how to adj for drift. Finally got it through to him that the wheels were not coplanar. AND when i told him by how much, are you ready for this,his reply was, "Oh, that's within tolerances"! Then he thought putting washers behind the wheel would help but he really wanted to talk about correcting the drift this would cause. [No i'm not making this up].
So please give me some help. Has anyone else tried to correct coplanar problems on this saw and how did you do so? And how critical are coplanar wheels? And forgive my rant but I do feel better now. Thanks

[glenn bradley]

Lagunas are highly respected but with a few exceptions, their service after the sale (or lack thereof) is the stuff of legend. Sounds like selling you a Driftmaster fence was his main priority ;-() We have many owners here and I hope one will chime in with a fix.

[Brian Weick]

Adjust the lower wheel to be coplanar with the upper, either in or out depending on where it falls off center on the lower tire....there has to be an allowable adjustment , lock bolt - hex....loosen and move the lower wheel for the adjustment.

Did you crown the tires?




B,

[Bernie Kopfer]

[QUOTE=Brian Weick;1862156]Adjust the lower wheel to be coplanar with the upper, either in or out depending on where it falls off center on the lower tire....there has to be an allowable adjustment , lock bolt - hex....loosen and move the lower wheel for the adjustment.

Did you crown the tires?


As I said the lower wheel is not adjustable. It is fixed on the shaft with snap rings. The upper appears to be movable but I wanted to check with someone who has done so before I take everything apart. And what about the importance of Coplanar wheels?

[Bill ThompsonNM]

I don't think it has crowned tires does it? If they're flat 3/8 inch non coplaner might not be a big deal and your problems might be due to something else. A lot of European bandsaws have flat wheels (both of mine, for example). Perhaps Van Huskey can chime in.

[Brian Weick]

[QUOTE As I said the lower wheel is not adjustable. It is fixed on the shaft with snap rings. The upper appears to be movable but I wanted to check with someone who has done so before I take everything apart. And what about the importance of Coplanar wheels?[/QUOTE]

Very important.....

There has to a way of adusting the wheels for coplanar ....

I don't know your machines mechanical schematic but I would find it hard to believe that there are not any adjustments for this problem.


Good luck,



B

[Bernie Kopfer]

I don't think it has crowned tires does it? If they're flat 3/8 inch non coplaner might not be a big deal and your problems might be due to something else. A lot of European bandsaws have flat wheels (both of mine, for example). Perhaps Van Huskey can chime in.

The tires are crowned and the new ones are also. Thanks for the input

[Bill ThompsonNM]

Does it have the 4 bolts on the backside to adjust the angle of the lower drive wheel. The manual for the larger machines would seem to indicate that the wheel should move linearly in addition to the left and right and tilting up and down.
Unfortunately Laguna doesn't seem to have any manuals for the smaller machines, nor diagrams.

Any chance one of the wheels is on backwards? I could imagine that happening in the factory and they are rarely symmetrical on the axis.

[Stephen Cherry]

I would look first at the guides and blade-- is the blade stable on the wheels when the saw is running? Does the blade vibrate on the wheels? The frequency of the vibration will change with tension, so if it does vibrate, try lowering or raising the tension to see how it changes. Are the guides set within a tight clearance to the 3 sides of the blade- both top and bottom? If you slide a peice of wood (very carefully) into the side of the blade- does it sound even, or are there a few teeth that have more set than the others?

I've spent a long time fixing things, and one thing that I have learned is that you need to use all of your senses to get a feel of what is going on, and most importantly, you can't have preconcieved ideas about what the problem is.

[Rod Sheridan]

I've seen expensive, old, large bandsaws where the wheels weren't coplanar.

If the blade tracks properly, the saw will work fine.

It's really only an issue if the tires are not crowned and the blade teeth have to run a fixed distance off the wheel, or if the wheels are so far out of alignment that the blade wanders on the wheels.

Regards, Rod

[Brian Weick]

I respectfully highly disagree ,
If they are not coplanar your blade will NOT center evenly on both tires.....and the way that you know that they are not coplaner is the bottom wheel will not track the blade in the center While your top wheel is Dead center- there resides your uneven vertical plane between the 2 wheels.


B,

[Dan Friedrichs]

Brian, I think Rod is saying that it won't necessarily hurt anything if the blade doesn't center evenly on both tires.

OP - I have a 14SE, and have actually adjusted the coplanarity on it, before. As I recall, there are three nuts on the back of the top casing (covered with rubber stoppers) which allow this adjustment to be made. The top two nuts are loosened (there are actually two nuts on each side of the case) to move the top wheel forward and backward, and the bottom knob allows you to adjust the top wheel to be parallel with the bottom wheel. I did not have an instruction manual, but if you look at it for a second, you'll quickly figure out how it works. You can also remove the blade, unscrew the back three nuts, and totally remove the top wheel.

On mine, there is easily 3/4" of adjustment available.

[Sam Murdoch]

Lagunas are highly respected but with a few exceptions, their service after the sale (or lack thereof) is the stuff of legend.

Is this still the case in 2012? I am very interested in this same bandsaw but I am a woodworker not a machinist and this idea of being stranded with problems is a huge discouragement.

[Brian Weick]

http://home.comcast.net/~jaswensen/machines/bandsaw/bandsaw.html



B,

[Dan Friedrichs]

Is this still the case in 2012? I am very interested in this same bandsaw but I am a woodworker not a machinist and this idea of being stranded with problems is a huge discouragement.

No. I'm not even the original owner of my saw (and I told them this), and they still spent a lot of time helping me troubleshoot an issue that ended up being related to my electrical service. There are numerous recent similar reports on this board about receiving excellent service from them.

[John Shuk]

Is this still the case in 2012? I am very interested in this same bandsaw but I am a woodworker not a machinist and this idea of being stranded with problems is a huge discouragement.
My experience with Laguna was atrocious in regards to after the sale service. The tech guys tried to help but just got nowhere. I never did get any satisfaction from the purchase or their efforts at customer service. They even wanted me to change the motor on the saw to a Baldor due to quality issues they had with the motor that came on it and didn't want me to have a problem down the road.... At a cost of $250.00 to me! I wanted to like my bandsaw. I was glad that I bought a saw from a company where the company President did the promotional videos. There just isn't enough substance there to guarantee satisfaction in my opinion.
I sold my saw at a pretty steep discount since it bugged me just to walk past it.
There are just too many of these stories that I have heard first hand to think Laguna should be at the top of any list.

[Myk Rian]

You can set the wheels co-planer with the blade off, then after tensioning and tracking, they won't be. Nature of the beast.
Set the tracking for the blade to ride center of the upper wheel, and don't worry about the lower.

Pushing stock too fast through the saw will result in a very rough cut.
You need to allow enough time for the chips to clear the wood. If you go too fast, they don't clear, and get packed up inside. Resulting in blade wobble inside the stock.

[Brian Weick]

Myk,

That is not correct, not trying to throw mud here, ok:) http://www.easyfreesmileys.com/smileys/free-fighting-smileys-476.gif
As you know the band saw has 2 adjustments pitch and tension
Once the blade is "tracked" - coplaner, your tension adjustment is a ride up vertically....it will stay in coplaner no matter how much tension you adjust on the blade.

Just saying,,http://www.easyfreesmileys.com/smileys/free-indifferent-smileys-437.gif (http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&key=3060fc7ffb3b6d570042ee19e8cd34e0&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.contractortalk.com%2Ff22%2Fem oticon-thread-94323%2Findex2%2F&v=1&libid=1328053513337&out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.easyfreesmileys.com%2Ffaceboo k-smileys.html&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.contractortalk.com%2Ff22%2Fem oticon-thread-94323%2F&title=The%20Emoticon%20Thread.%20-%20Page%202%20-%20Off%20Topic%20(Non%20Trade)%20-%20Contractor%20Talk&txt=&jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_13280535899541)

B,http://fototime.com/99CB340AC2B6105/orig.gif

[david paul miller]

on my saw , changing tension does change coplanar.

[david paul miller]

Mark Duginske said so ,page 114-116

[Brian Weick]

So what do you do to correct that....?


B,

[david paul miller]

Because i use this saw for re sawing only, I set the coplanar adjustment to the blade and tension i use for re sawing . When I was using smaller blades on this saw I could find a happy medium before throwing the wheels out of parallel.

[Brian Weick]

Because i use this saw for re sawing only, I set the coplanar adjustment to the blade and tension i use for re sawing . When I was using smaller blades on this saw I could find a happy medium before throwing the wheels out of parallel.

Do your wheels track on the center of the tires after your adjustments..........?

B,

[Bernie Kopfer]

I called LAGUNA again and insisted on speaking with someone who knew this bandsaw[ LT14 SE]. The individual i talked to knew this bandsaw and this problem. I learned this: On this bandsaw do not try to adj the lower wheel because of factory set shims to align it properly and removing the shaft will lose this setting and it is not readily corrected. The upper wheel can be aligned like mentioned above and this is what I intend to do. However the rep did say that the wheels being out of coplanar should not effect the quality of cut, all other things being adj properly. I'll let others more experienced than i argue that one out. Thanks for the input.

[david paul miller]

Do your wheels track on the center of the tires after your adjustments..........?

B,
my blade does

[Brian Weick]

LOL,,,,,,

Write.........LOL



WhOops.....


All I am saying is , if the blade tracks on center then your wheels are in coplanar......not the wheel....LOL


Thanks for reminding me that I am loosing it.,,,,LOL


B,

[Carl Knapp]

Bernie,
Dan is correct on adjusting the upper wheel. Just be careful to make sure to mark the inside nuts with a marker as a reference so you can adjust each one the same. You do not want to throw off the side to side. That can be tricky to get back. the co planar doesn't have to be perfect. This is more important on some of the smaller saws so that you stay with in the frame perimeters. After doing this you will have to square the table to the back of the blade if you want to cut things like tenons.