Vibration in my delta table saw

[Jeff Monson]

I own a delta table saw, contractors model and I'm getting alot of vibration that I dont like, its worse when starting up the machine and shutting off the machine, still does have a shake to it when its running, I'm using 2 different freud blades and it does it with both blades, any suggestions on getting the thing smooth?

[Bart Leetch]

Check your pulleys make sure their tight us locktite on the set screws. If this doesn't work get a Fenner link belt. You may not need steel machine turned pulleys so just try the belt first the if need be get the pulleys.

[Scott Loven]

Try a link-belt/pulley package, it made a world of difference on my contractors saw.
http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?familyid=892
Scott

[Dev Emch]

My first suggestion is to check the pulleys and belts. Often these are a bit cheesy. Pulleys are die cast from pot metal and the belts are cheap.

Try grainger or possibly grizzly. Believe it or not, I do recall grizzly haveing CNC machined pulleys a while back. Machined pulleys are always better. As for the belts, take your belting to your nearest Gates dealer and order up the best Gates replacement product you can get. Dont get the ones used on farm tractors, rather get one more suited for higher speed.

Or you may go with the link belts.

Next on the list is motor-pulley-arbor alignment. You may need to tweak some things here to insure the motor is in direct alignment with the pulley. You may need to shim the motor a bit here or there.

Next, you may wish to check out runnout. Using a dial indicator, check the runnout of your arbor shaft. You may also wish to check runout on the stub comming out the back side of the arbor where the pulley mounts.

Rotate your arbor shaft by hand and give it a good listen. Do you hear any gravelly sounds? Do you feel any rough spots or stiff spots? If you do, you may need to change out your bearings.

Lastly, check out your motor. Are the insides of your motor clean? How are the start winding cut out points? Clean and clicky or stuffed full of sawdust and barely moving? This type of problem will cause the motor to behave like an unbalanced washing machine on start up and then later on during shut down when the start coils are engaged when they should not be. The fact that three phase machines rarely exhibit this behavor suggests that you wish to begin here in your trouble shooting.

[Brett Baldwin]

Along the blade runout line of thinking, if there is excessive runout, check that the arbor doesn't have any crud on it. In general, crud is amazingly good at throwing things out of whack.

[Homer Faucett]

You have some pretty good instructions so far. I had the same issue with my Delta Contractor (36-675) saw when I bought it. The solution was twofold: (1) replaced the manufacturer's belt with a link-belt, and (2) aligned the pulleys. If that hadn't worked, I would have gone ahead and bought machined pulleys, but didn't want to pay the extra money if I didn't have to.

In my instance, the pulley on the motor mount had to be brought out a considerable distance to get it in alignment. I had to shim the belt shroud to keep it from being rubbed by the belt once the pulleys were aligned. It worked pretty well then, even with the stock belt, but my saw was the floor demo, and had a definite memory from where the motor had been pulling on the belt while it sat in one place. Replacing it with the link belt (~$25) made it very smooth.

There are a few posts on tuning up a contractor's saw on the web. In my opinion, you don't need a dial indicator to align your blade--just a straight stick and a brass screw. For about 30 minutes of tinker time, you can have a great cutting saw. I hope you like yours as much as I have enjoyed mine.

[Howard Barlow]

My Delta contractor did the same thing. As others said, the link belt took it all out.

[Bill Lewis]

My Delta contractors saw never had a significant vibration problem. It would shake a small amount if cold or if it had been sitting for awhile. But that would go away after warming up. I also had another added advantage with that saw, it had cast iron wings. More mass made it less prone to vibration.
Ultimately I did put the machined pulleys and link belt on it. Just because the link belt will never take a set. The factory pulleys were much better quality that I expected but it was a kit so I put the new ones on anyway.