The new Ridgid 4512 and Alignment....

[Justin Jump]

So I read all the reviews about the alignment issues with the Ridgid 4512, and I felt pretty confident I could perform the alignment and all the measuring. I had some time last night and today to get to it, so I got at it.....

Did Ridgid fix the issue? I mounted a dial caliper to the miter guage, and from one end to the other, it was only out about 0.002", towards the middle, less than 0.005".

Am I measuring this right? I'll bet I read "furnitudes" alignment article 10 times, and I expected to have some issues.

I also used the dial caliper to measure how much the blade changed while raising and lowering, again, less than 0.005".

Not sure how everyone is measuring from the blade to the miter slot, I used a combination square, the used calipers to check that. That measurement, after a few times tinkering, started to some out around 0.020", which is less than a 1/32".

Do I possibly have a good one out of the box? Would you guys live with the 0.020"? or is there an easy more accurate way to measure the miter slot to the blade? or am I over killing this?

The pictures are from each end of the fence, with the dial caliper mounted to the miter guage.243998243999

THX

[Joseph Tarantino]

IMHO. .020" is too much. i try to get the blade parallel to the miter slot. when i did this an emerson electric built 10" CI c-man contractor saw, i was able to get the blade parallel to the miter slot. note that the reading is .000" on the infeed side of the blade and the same reading when the digital dial gauge is moved to the outfeed side of the blade. set your dial gauge to 0.000" on the infeed side of the blade and if the blade is parallel to the miter slot, when the dial gauge is slid to the rear of the blade, after rotating the same blade tooth to the outfeed side of the table, the reading should remain unchanged ( in this case, 0.000 on the infeed side and 0.000 on the outfeed side. in the following pics, the infeed side is the pic on the right. the outfeed side is the pic on the left).

here are a few good tune up sites:

http://www.newwoodworker.com/dilindjiguse.html

http://www.newwoodworker.com/basic/tsalign.html

http://www.newwoodworker.com/tunemiterslots.html

BTW, did you remove any "slop" or play that the 4512 miter gauge has as it slides in the miter slot? any play there will show up during the alignment activity as blade to slot misalgnment.244013244012