How can you reset/reinstall the Incra TS-LS fence system a second time?

[Ty Williams]

I recently got the Incra TS-LS fence, and I'm totally sold on it. However, I managed to have a slight fender bender in my shop and the main fence rails were knocked slightly askew in their brackets. No problem, I'll just take it all apart and follow the (very good) manual through again. On step 1, I hit a snag. You're supposed to used one portion of a bracket as a jig to align the rails to the saw surface at just the right offset. After that, you install some black plastic they call Glide Pads onto the brackets for use in a later assembly. So, now I'm in the position where I have the glide pads installed but need to re-use the brackets as alignment jigs again. Anyone else been through this and have an idea what to do?

It's after business hours so I figured I'd ask SMC to see if anyone gets back to me tonight.

[Mike Shields]

I received my TS-LS before I received my tablesaw. In wanting to do something, I started some of the TS-LS assembly, and that included adding the black sliding pieces to the brackets.

The only thing that I noticed was that is raised the overall height of the 2 fence lockdowns (front and back) by the black pieces. If it has somehow negatively affected the operation of the fence, I sure as heck haven't noticed it.

Mike

[Craig Behnke]

I'd love to hear what Incra says. in my experience they are excellent at customer service and answering questions like that.

please keep us posted.

[fRED mCnEILL]

Just use a caliper to measure with.

[Ty Williams]

Incra's response is to not bother breaking down the bridge to get the brackets back. The top surface of the rails needs to be about 1/2" lower than the surface of the table. It's apparently not super-critical so long as the rails are parallel to the surface of the table. Once you've re-aligned the rails, you MUST work through Page 8 of the owner's manual from start to finish again. It deals with aligning the fence blade and the fence's brackets so that it'll glide smoothly in and out. If you didn't save them (like me), the cardboard spacers used to hold the fence blade off the table for setup are 0.050" (1.25mm).


I know right now I'm 10.5mm from the table surface to to tops of all 4 brackets, so I'll have to go measure to see how much farther down the rail tops are. If they're 2-3mm, I'm just going to leave it as-is.

[Earl Rumans]

If the rails got knocked askew are they still straight and not bent at all?

[Ty Williams]

Within the limits of the gear I've got to test with, yeah, they're still straight. They're surprisingly springy for being metal box beams as large as they are. What happened is that, when I lowered the saw down to the floor with the mobile base, the legs at the end of the rails hit a high spot before the saw came to rest on the ground. So they were being lifted up like I was trying to move the saw like a wheelbarrow. So they only were experiencing force in the direction that the mounting brackets can slip against the table saw.

[Earl Rumans]

Understood, that's why I like my Jet mobile base, the saw never lifts you just lock an unlock the wheels for movement.

[Ruhi Arslan]

Drop the rails far enough to have the base clamps to rest on the table top on both sides by loosening the rail brackets but without totally falling off the table. Put a shim to raise the base clamps to a desired height to clear the table so it does not make contact when sliding it. Use C-clamps to fix the base clamps to the table top. Raise the rails against the base clamps. Repeat on both ends of the table. If the base clamps are not touching the table top, you are done. I have migrated my system two more times after the first install as I upgraded my table saw. It works just fine.

[Gary Pennington]

Like yours, my fence was moved from saw to saw. I called Incra, the fellow I spoke with said to set the rails 1/2" below the surface of the table top.

g

[Ty Williams]

After some careful checking, the front rail probably hadn't moved at all. The rear rail had moved .3-.4mm on one side and .4-.5mm on the other. What had actually happened was that stubbing the legs against the ground had flexed the rails and made the router table shift slightly in its brackets. When the feet came back off the floor, the fact that that router table brackets had shifted left some tension or twist on the rails which threw the whole fence system into a snit. As soon as I took the router table out, things got much better but I checked and reset the primary alignment anyway. I settled for getting the rear rail dead parallel to the table top by about .2-.3mm lower than the front rail. That's just where it wanted to settle no matter how much I persuaded it, so I figured parallel to the table was the big issue.

I then re-calibrated the bridge/carriage. I actually spent much more time doing this than I did getting the rails straight. For whatever reason, following the directions in the manual consistently resulted in the bridge's brackets moving towards the center and pinching the main rails. I set it up and reset it 4-5 five times before I finally realized it was tightening a consistent amount. So I used my Woodpeckers Setup Blocks to shim the bridge bracket 2mm outwards immediately above the bridge lock wingnuts and 1mm just below them. The bridge brackets tightened just like they had on each of the other attempts but, once I removed the Setup Block shims, the final result was just a tiny smidgen tighter than I would have liked in an ideal world, but more than acceptable.

This makes the bridge/carriage slide along the main rails very freely like the demo videos all show and also makes it very easy to remove and replace the whole fence assembly from the main rails when I want to use the integrated router table. Before, with the bridge brackets about 2mm too tight, it was hard to tell if you were tight up against the reference stops or if it was just locked up on the rails and it was very hard to get the assembly on and off the saw by myself.

So overall, some small tweaks produced results that were well worth the hour or two I spent fussing with it in the shop today.