Table Saw Problem

[Corey Hallagan]

Before I changed the splitter on my table saw, I was getting some vibration which I don't think is all that unusual but I am getting some blade marks on my oak when I rip it. It doesn't burn and it seems to push thru ok. I get clean and smooth cross cuts. This is with a 50 tooth combo Dewalt Woodworking series blade. When I put on my dedicated 24 tooth rip blade, it is not quite as noticeable but still there. Again it doesn't burn. Is this typical or should I be concerned. I kind of attribute some of it to the vibration. The blade is square to the miter slot and guage which shouldn't have any bearing while ripping. And when lining up the fence along the miter slot, it seems right on. I am thinking the pulley on the motor might be a little off balance from the arbor pulley, but try as I might I can't get the pully to move over at all after loosening the set screw. Anythoughts or suggestions to my problem or maybe it isn't a problem. If I had a jointer I could clean it up no problem.

Thanks,
Corey

[Roy Wall]

Corey,

You didn't mention anything about the rip fence.....Mine is usually set a touch (.002 ish) "opened" toward the back of the saw to prevent binding........

[Don Baer]

Cory;
It could still be an alingment problem or it could be a balance issue. Have you checked the alingment with a dial indicator?. Is the belt alingned properly?

also check the belt itself.

Hope this helps ?

[Corey Hallagan]

I left part of it out it seems but I was trying to say the rip fence lines up along the miter slot perfectly. No, didn't use a dial indicator. I could try knocking the fence out in the rear .002 or so. It seems to me the belt and pulley may not be lined up perfectly, but I can't get the pulley to move at all. Belt... what do I check on the belt itself?

[Don Baer]

Cory,
If the pulleys are mis-aligned then the belt will be rubbing on the side of the pulleys and you may see excessive wear on the sides of the belt.

[Robert E Lee]

Some of the pulleys have a set screw on top of a set screw. Take the top one clear out to bet to the bottom one.
Bob

[Norman Hitt]

Cory, are the blade marks on both pieces after the cut or only on one piece? If only on one piece, are they on the dimensioned piece, or the waste piece? Are the marks from the front of the blade or the back of the blade? The answer to these questions should determine of the problem is the blade or the Splitter/fence. The splitters on some saws are sometimes the hardest item to get aligned properly. If the Fence is the suspect, the best way to check that I've found, is to adjust your mitre bar so there is NO SLOP at all in it all the way through it's travel range, and then if you don't have a dial indicator, just clamp a board to the face of the mitre fence with a brass screw in the end of the board facing the rip fence, and then slide the mitre bar back and forth and see if brass screw stays the same distance from the rip fence.

You can check for blade wobble, by turning the board around on the mitre fence so the brass screw is facing the blade and with the belt removed, turn the arbor by hand slowly, and watch the distance from the blade and the brass screw head.

The vibration could be caused by a hard spot or "Set" in the belt itself. If you need to move the pully, loosen the set screw and place an open end wrench over the shaft, behind the pully and try to hit the wrench with a hammer to drive the pully off the shaft, but if this doesn't work, you may be able to rent a "Gear Puller" from the "Autozone" auto parts place for a small fee, to pull the pully off, then clean it and the shaft lightly with some emery cloth til it will slip on and off without force. If the pully is warped or out of round, the best solution is to get a machined pully set from some one (such as In-Line Industries, or other), and replace the ones that came on the saw.

If the belt has a bad/hard spot or has taken a Set, replace it with another belt, OR with link belts.

Hope this will help you find the problem, so let us know what you find.

One other thing, if the blade has no warp and the sides of all teeth are ground EVEN, AND there is no PLAY in the arbor bearing, then if the saw is set parallel to the mitre slot and the fence is set parallel to that, there should be NO blade marks, and kicking the fence out at the back is NOT necessary. (I do not like my fences kicked out)

With all this said, however, I have seen Some Saws, AND Some Blades that just could not be adjusted to eliminate All the saw marks, yet others were easy to tune and the cuts were as clean as a whistle, and it didn't have anything to do with the brand of the saw either, as it varied from saw to saw of the same brand and model.

[Corey Hallagan]

Robert, checked and no set screw underneath the other. Was worth a try, thanks. The more I look at it, I don't think it is the belt or pulleys, no wear on the belt that I can see and from a second look appear to be in line.

Norman, I used the screw method to check the blade to table and that seemed fine. Haven't done that on the fence. There are teeth marks pretty much all the way down both pieces but seems to be worse on the dimensioned piece. Waste material doesn't seem to be as bad. As I said, the combo blade is worse and neith leaves marks during a cross cut but the rip blade leaves less marks, nevertheless they are there. I have Kelly Mehlers video and he recommends kicking the blade out .001 to .002, that is why I was considering doing that.

Thanks for everyones help, I will hopefully get it figured out.

Corey

[Jeff Fritzson]

I have the same saw as you and a few things I noticed were:

1. The fence is slightly bowed in the middle. You can adjust with the nuts that attach the "plastic" to the metal. Detected this with the dial indicator.

2. The pulleys are very tight. I removed both and replaced with machined pulleys but had to tap out with wood straddling the shaft.

3. Replaced the v-belt with a link belt.

By the way I finally recieved a new motor for my saw (long story previously detailed).

Jeff

[Mike Cutler]

[QUOTE=Corey Hallagan]"I left part of it out it seems but I was trying to say the rip fence lines up along the miter slot perfectly."

Corey. I'm not trying to create anymore confusion for you, but this statement does not seem correct to me. The rip fence needs to be parallel to the blade as a minimum. It really has no relationship to the miter slot(s).
Convention is to also set the fence a few thou' out of exact paralle( moving away from the blade)l on the backside of the blade to minimize burning, and pinching of the material.
If I just misunderstood, I apologize and disregard this.

[John Renzetti]

Hi Cory, Check to see if your rip fence is toeing out or in. It should toe out by .002-.004. The best of blades will still have a runout of about .002". The avegage ones can go to .004". That should be the max allowed. If you have runout on your arbor of say .001" then this will also exaggerate the problem. Personally I like to set my rip fence to just beyond the blade around the riving knife. I find this gives a nice consistant clean cut when ripping.
take care,
John

[Corey Hallagan]

I am not sure here, one minute i think the pulley's are all right, another they don't look like it. They won't come off for me anyway. I ownder if just putting a link belt on would help the vibration?? I can only try I guess.

Mike, thanks for the help. I have read in different "tune up your table saw" articles to line up your fence with the edge of the miter slot by feel. That is how it was set up originally. I think the manual even says that but I know that isn't a very techinical way of doing things. I set the fence up 3 inches away from the blade tooth in front, flipped it to the back and set it just a tiny tick over 3 inches. I will do further testing tomorrow and use the brass screw on a block of wood like norman says. Thanks all for the help, I really appreciate it.

Corey

[Lee DeRaud]

"I left part of it out it seems but I was trying to say the rip fence lines up along the miter slot perfectly."

Corey. I'm not trying to create anymore confusion for you, but this statement does not seem correct to me. The rip fence needs to be parallel to the blade as a minimum. It really has no relationship to the miter slot(s).If the blade isn't parallel to the miter slot, you're in a world of hurt when it comes to any jig (including the miter gauge) that references off the miter slot instead of the fence.

Once the blade and miter slot are dead parallel, the miter slot can be used to set up the fence.

[Mike Cutler]

Lee. I think I didn't explain myself fully, or correctly.
I agree that once everything is setup correctly the blade, miter slot(s) and rip fence should all be "parallel" to each other. It was gauging the fence to the slot that had me thinking.
In any calibration procedure you always try to apply one reference, or standard, in this case the blade is the standard. I use the flat part of the blade and mark it with a yellow dot, just in front of one tooth. This is my reference point(standard). I don't use a tooth because it's too easy to reference to a different area of the tooth. Once the blade is "Parallel" to the fence I put a 6' starrett machine rule along it and make sure that the front edge, and back edge of the fence are also "parallel" along the entire length. This will show if you have any dips or bumps in your fence, or if any fine tuning is required. When you only measure the fence to the blade at the front and back of the blade, you are only looking at about 7" of fence length. any small error not able to be measured here will be compounded by the fence being 30 something inches long. That's why I use the 6' machine rule to check the entire length of the fence .
One more source of frustation can be those nylon stopnuts on the fence that are used to set the angle. If they are rounded they will conform to any small manufacturing defects in the rail and cause inconsistent readings. Mine are all flat, they came rounded.
More than I meant to write, musta been the coffee.
:rolleyes:

[Lee DeRaud]

Lee. I think I didn't explain myself fully, or correctly.
I agree that once everything is setup correctly the blade, miter slot(s) and rip fence should all be "parallel" to each other. It was gauging the fence to the slot that had me thinking.
In any calibration procedure you always try to apply one reference, or standard, in this case the blade is the standard. I use the flat part of the blade and mark it with a yellow dot, just in front of one tooth. This is my reference point(standard). I don't use a tooth because it's too easy to reference to a different area of the tooth. Once the blade is "Parallel" to the fence I put a 6' starrett machine rule along it and make sure that the front edge, and back edge of the fence are also "parallel" along the entire length. This will show if you have any dips or bumps in your fence, or if any fine tuning is required. When you only measure the fence to the blade at the front and back of the blade, you are only looking at about 7" of fence length. any small error not able to be measured here will be compounded by the fence being 30 something inches long. That's why I use the 6' machine rule to check the entire length of the fence .
One more source of frustation can be those nylon stopnuts on the fence that are used to set the angle. If they are rounded they will conform to any small manufacturing defects in the rail and cause inconsistent readings. Mine are all flat, they came rounded.
More than I meant to write, musta been the coffee.
:rolleyes:I understand the principle of using a single reference, I just think that single reference should be (1) fixed and (2) as long as possible. The miter slot is the only candidate that addresses both issues.

[Corey Hallagan]

Thanks for all the help guys, it turned out it was the splitter, needed to be adjusted a bit. All is well now!

Corey

[scott spencer]

Blade marks are not unusual depending on the blade, the cut, and the wood. It's hard for us to know how pronounced they are. In my experience, "some" marks are normal, but if it's really exaggerated with a good 50T combo blade on most cuts, something's probably not right. It would be normal for it to be more noticeable with a 24T blade on average than a 50T of similar quality.

Double check your alignment and check your blade for square to the table. You might even pull your blade off and make sure there's no small chips between the arbor and blade body.

[Corey Hallagan]

Thanks Scott, the splitter was still a little bit off. I am not getting just a few blade marks that I can live with. I have a sneaking suspicion that the blade is a tiny bit off to the table. I checked it again with the dowel and screw method and at the back the blade is just a smidgen tighter against the screw. I should of bought a set of PALs when you told me to :), it works for now but that is in the future and a link belt. I am not going to hassle with the pulley's.
Thanks,
Corey
P.S. no chips, I check that everytime I take the blade off which over the last few days has been no less that 25 times :)

[Byron Trantham]

I understand the principle of using a single reference, I just think that single reference should be (1) fixed and (2) as long as possible. The miter slot is the only candidate that addresses both issues.

Lee, I agree an this point. A standard reference should not be able to be moved. I have the TS Aligner Jr. and the process is to make the blade parallel to the miter slot and then fence parallel to the miter slot.