Noah Katz
11-13-2006, 12:50 PM
It's a mystery to me why more saws don't have riving knives, which if my understanding is correct, is simply a splitter that both raises and lowers and tilts with the blade.
Besides being curious as to what kind of carriage beef the SawStop gives you for all that $, I was curious whether there's anything unique that related to the incorporation of a riving knife, so I looked at the exploded view of the SawStop carriage assembly; p.81 in the manual
http://www.sawstop.com/Cabinet_Saw_Manual.pdf
There is indeed - rather than a simple pivot giving the arbor a circular trajectory, it's guided on two vertical shafts driven by a threaded rod.
This would keep the riving knife at the same relative height to the blade at any height setting.
The Powermatic PM2000 exploded view is on p.34 here
http://www.wmhtoolgroup.com/partfiles/m_1792001K.pdf
It's not exactly clear because the riving knife is shown on a different page with the guard assembly, but it looks conventional as far as I can tell.
Maybe there's more to it, because that would mean that it would suffer from what I think is the reason more saws don't have a riving knife, which would be the change in height of the knife relative to the blade mentioned above.
I'd be interested in anyone's knowledge/thoughts on this issue.
Thanks
Besides being curious as to what kind of carriage beef the SawStop gives you for all that $, I was curious whether there's anything unique that related to the incorporation of a riving knife, so I looked at the exploded view of the SawStop carriage assembly; p.81 in the manual
http://www.sawstop.com/Cabinet_Saw_Manual.pdf
There is indeed - rather than a simple pivot giving the arbor a circular trajectory, it's guided on two vertical shafts driven by a threaded rod.
This would keep the riving knife at the same relative height to the blade at any height setting.
The Powermatic PM2000 exploded view is on p.34 here
http://www.wmhtoolgroup.com/partfiles/m_1792001K.pdf
It's not exactly clear because the riving knife is shown on a different page with the guard assembly, but it looks conventional as far as I can tell.
Maybe there's more to it, because that would mean that it would suffer from what I think is the reason more saws don't have a riving knife, which would be the change in height of the knife relative to the blade mentioned above.
I'd be interested in anyone's knowledge/thoughts on this issue.
Thanks