Jerry Allen
02-05-2008, 9:48 AM
Last night after 4 or 5 years of flawless service, all of a sudden, the table on my Makita SMS started to be very hard to rotate. I depend on this machine a lot, so took it apart before I quit work for the day. There was not a lot of dust under the table, but I cleaned it up, applied new grease and it started working better than new.
The center bolt under the zero clearance insert holding the table to the base is a little weird. It seemed too loose when I took it apart. When I put it back together, I had to mess with the tightness to get the drag on the table right. If it's too tight the table won't turn. If I note any changes, I may take it apart use some locktight to hold it where it is adjusted to.
On a side note, and something that has come up here before, when I reinstalled the rear fence, I just eyeballed the holes for the four screws so the fence holes were concentric to the table's threaded holes before installing the bolts. To my surprise, when I went to adjust it, it was almost dead on perpendicular to the blade. Previously when adjusting it, I had fought it some to get it right. Previously I had not taken it off completely, and I guess one end was up against the bolts. Since I had it off, and started from the holes being aligned, the adjustment was almost negligible.
The center bolt under the zero clearance insert holding the table to the base is a little weird. It seemed too loose when I took it apart. When I put it back together, I had to mess with the tightness to get the drag on the table right. If it's too tight the table won't turn. If I note any changes, I may take it apart use some locktight to hold it where it is adjusted to.
On a side note, and something that has come up here before, when I reinstalled the rear fence, I just eyeballed the holes for the four screws so the fence holes were concentric to the table's threaded holes before installing the bolts. To my surprise, when I went to adjust it, it was almost dead on perpendicular to the blade. Previously when adjusting it, I had fought it some to get it right. Previously I had not taken it off completely, and I guess one end was up against the bolts. Since I had it off, and started from the holes being aligned, the adjustment was almost negligible.