SawStop blade alignment at 45 degrees

[Gabor Siklos]

I've been a proud owner of a SawStop ICS (industrial version) table saw for a number of years, and have had nothing but a great experience with the saw and their customer service. This is the first time I've had somewhat of an issue but it's probably "user error", so I'm turning to the forums to see what your opinions are.

I have aligned the blade to the miter slot before but only at 90 degrees and now I wanted to see/align it at 45 as well. I had no problem realigning the blade again at 90 but when I went to check how it was at the 45 degree tilt, I found that the back side of the blade was out by about 0.01 (relative to the right side miter slot, it was out and away from the slot towards the left). I went to the manual and try to follow it to align the blade to the tilt angle (pg 53 in the ICS manual). I'm an engineer by day and, to be honest, this section I found very confusing and counter-intuitive. It tells you to tap on one side of a V-bracket that connects the rear elevation shaft to the rear of the trunnion. I think you have to tap on the other side of this V-bracket than what manual says, but let's not even focus on that for a moment.

I called SawStop support to try to get some clarity on how to properly do it and the tech basically told me that I'd better not mess with the V-bracket at the back of the trunnion and also that their "tolerance" for the blade alignment at 45 degrees is 12 thou, so it's within that and I shouldn't even bother.

Now, I'm not one to be chasing perfection just for the sake of perfection, but I'd like to build some casework with miter joins at the corners and I think that much of a misalignment at 45 will show up on the wide cross cuts when I put the two pieces together.

Has anybody done this on a SawStop? I know other cabinet saws have to have their tables shimmed at either the front or the back to get this alignment correctly but the SawStop manual advises this other method. Should I even bother? Is this much misalignment really acceptable?

[johnny means]

IME, that small a discrepancy won't be your problem when cutting wide miters. Your better served figuring out how to hold your work piece perfectly flat through the entire cut.

[Thomas L. Miller]

Gabor,
I sometimes use my Sawstop ICS to make miters. I use a miter sled (you can find all kinds of examples around). It's just a cut off sled with a 90 degree angle split in two for the opposing faces of the joint. If you don't get an EXACT match, use a shooting board and hand plane. I'd listen to guys at Sawstop and NOT mess with the saw's guts. Just my $.02.
Regards
Tom

[David Kumm]

Doesn't that mean the cast iron top needs to be shimmed a bit on the back side of the base to raise it up? That will close up the blade without changing the reference at 90. Dave

EDIT: I'm assuming right tilt. If left, the front would need to be raised.

[Charlie Hinton]

I think I would square up two boards that are the length of the casework you will be building and try cutting the mitered joint you will need.
If the joint is acceptable you are good to go.
If not acceptable I would call SawStop back and specifically ask for Trent and find out what he has to say about the alignment.

[Jim Morgan]

Gabor,
I sometimes use my Sawstop ICS to make miters. I use a miter sled (you can find all kinds of examples around). It's just a cut off sled with a 90 degree angle split in two for the opposing faces of the joint. If you don't get an EXACT match, use a shooting board and hand plane. I'd listen to guys at Sawstop and NOT mess with the saw's guts. Just my $.02.
Regards
Tom

OP is cutting bevels with the blade tilted, not miters with the blade at 90°.

[Gabor Siklos]

David - Yes I agree with you that the front would need to be shimmed but this is not the procedure SawStop outlines in the manual and it's not even that easy b/c the top is attached to both the trunnion brackets as well as the housing on 4 points. I could still try that as a last resort...

[Gabor Siklos]

Thank you Charlie. I'll try asking for Trent. In that past couple of times I called them, I had nothing put super knowledgeable techs on the other end of the line. This time however, the guy was downright arrogant and pretty much told me I was crazy to even try to get it better than the 10 thou they have as their "tolerance".

[David Kumm]

I understand. Attaching the guts to the cast iron top is not my preference but seems to be the way of the world now. Allows the base to be lighter but complicates adjustments. Dave

[mreza Salav]

Gabor, I have the same saw and I think I did this "once" at the very beginning when setting up the saw and the procedure outlined in the manual (even though didn't make much sense to me at the time) did work fine.

[Bill Dufour]

I do not think it really matters if these are cross cuts as long as the work is pushed all the way past the blade. If you are ripping then kickback could be an issue.
Bil lD.

[Trent Davis]

Gabor,

Thanks for contacting me. I'm sorry for the experience you had with the previous tech. I'll give him a smack.

This is not something that we have to do all that often so I'll need to do some research on this but we'll get it fixed one way or another.

[Simon MacGowen]

but we'll get it fixed one way or another.

Music to any customer's ears!

That attitude should be the minimum benchmark for any business which really cares about its reputation.

Simon

[Trent Davis]

Music to any customer's ears!

That attitude should be the minimum benchmark for any business which really cares about its reputation.

Simon
I agree. It's really disappointing that we have come to expect so much less from customer service, although I have to admit that I love that moment when I've got a customer on the phone and I can almost hear the chip fall off their shoulder when they realize that I'm not there to screw them over.

[Gabor Siklos]

Sawstop has amazing customer service and Trent is one of the best people there. It's obvious that he truly cares about the customers and loves what he does (I spent at least an hour on the phone yesterday). Thank you Trent!
I can tell you that I talked at least 3 of my friends/peers into purchasing a saw from them in the last couple of years and it is in no small part because of the experience that I had with them....(one of my friends unfortunately had to "wait" until he lost 3 of his fingers...)

[Nick Decker]

Kudos to Trent for posting here. I'd be interested to know what the resolution of your issue is/was.

[Trent Davis]

I'd be interested to know what the resolution of your issue is/was.

I think I know what caused it to come out of alignment, and I think I know the fix, but I'm not going to get too excited until this is all fixed.

[Terry Wawro]

Gabor, I'm having the same problem and I'd be interested to know what the resolution of your issue is was also.

[Gabor Siklos]

I'm sorry for not updating this thread for so long.

Thanks to Trent's great help, I managed to get this correctly aligned. I'll try to explain how we got to the bottom of this:

First of all, these saws are built like tanks and this kind of misalignment rarely happens, so we needed to figure out why it got to this state in the first place. I bought this saw a couple of years ago used (it was a steal, but that's a separate story...). The previous owner probably adjusted the riving knife clamp in a way that it was too far back and the rear riving knife clamp adjustment bolt was hitting the underside of the cast iron table, when the blade was tilted to 45. This caused it to shift things out of alignment when angling the blade to 45-degrees, because the bolt started to hit the table past 43 (or so) degrees, if I really cranked down on the tilt wheel. I could actually not see this happening because the insert plate was covering this all, and I only used the blade at 45 a couple of times in the past. Once I moved the riving knife a bit closer to the blade (maybe 1/8" or so) this problem went away.

So basically what happened as a result of this, was that the elevation plate has pushed "away" from the trunnion and the distance between the two in the back was greater than in the front. Once I figured this out, it was pretty straight forward to fix the problem. Basically, the V-bracket in the back connects the elevation plate to the trunnion, and since only the plate can be moved (or adjusted), I needed to push this closer to the trunnion. After loosening the 2 bolts at the open end of the V-bracket (at the trunnion side) I pushed the elevation plate side closer to it by tapping on it with a mallet, realigned the table again at 0-degrees, checked again at 45 and it was spot on at both positions.

By the way, I think the manual actually has it wrong because they tell you to tap the wrong side of the V-bracket. I sent a detailed explanation of why I think it's wrong to Trent at Sawstop, and they're looking into it.

Again, I could not have done this without the dedicated help of Trent Davis and want to thank him publicly here as well!

[Nick Decker]

Thanks for the update. Also nice of Trent to make several appearances here. It's somewhat rare to see manufacturers' techs on forums like this, and I can imagine why. Anyway, good job Trent!

[Trent Davis]

It was great working with you, Gabor! I like to see these weird ones every now and then. Your saw definitely did its best to keep off the dull times.

[Simon MacGowen]

Thanks for sharing your fix. I hope Trent will let us know if the manual on the V-bracket needs to be amended.

I have used four different SawStops (two ICSs and two PCSs) and none have had any alignment issues. The consistency in their quality (one as old as 14 years? (first gen.) is amazing. The only things that are not original in those saws are the blades.

Simon

[Ben Rivel]

This is awesome to read and thanks to Trent for taking the time to post here! Ive had nothing but a great experience with my 3HP PCS and SawStop's customer service!