Tom Henderson2
05-26-2008, 1:31 AM
Good evening everyone.
I had gone through my old mid-sixties Craftsman contractor saw and cleaned/lubed it, installed a Delta T-2 fence and aligned the blade to the miter slots as well as installing machined pulleys and a Fenner link belt.
All of this improved the cut quality a fair amount. But it seemed like it could be better. In particular there seemed to be a lot of blade wobble during start and coastdown.
Turns out the arbor flange was not square to the arbor shaft. I measured 0.003 to 0.004 wobble at the flange and ~0.018 out at the blade rim. No wonder the wobble was so obvious.
Fortunately the arbor shaft was straight -- less than 0.001 runnout.
So I removed the arbor and had the face of the flange trued up by a machinist and reinstalled it with new bearings. Now I measure less than 0.001 of wobble.
It makes a HUGE difference! The wobble is imperceptable, the cut quality is noticeably better, and the saw seems to even sound quieter.
All in all it was a pretty easy job to remove and reinstall the arbor. The hardest part was finding a machine shop that would take such a small job. I finally found friend-of-a-friend that had a research lab at his work and he was able to true it up for me one Saturday.
So if any of you ever do a full-up table saw recondition and measure a lot of runnout at the arbor flange, take the extra effort to get it trued up. The improvement will be worth it.
-Tom H.
Ventura, CA
I had gone through my old mid-sixties Craftsman contractor saw and cleaned/lubed it, installed a Delta T-2 fence and aligned the blade to the miter slots as well as installing machined pulleys and a Fenner link belt.
All of this improved the cut quality a fair amount. But it seemed like it could be better. In particular there seemed to be a lot of blade wobble during start and coastdown.
Turns out the arbor flange was not square to the arbor shaft. I measured 0.003 to 0.004 wobble at the flange and ~0.018 out at the blade rim. No wonder the wobble was so obvious.
Fortunately the arbor shaft was straight -- less than 0.001 runnout.
So I removed the arbor and had the face of the flange trued up by a machinist and reinstalled it with new bearings. Now I measure less than 0.001 of wobble.
It makes a HUGE difference! The wobble is imperceptable, the cut quality is noticeably better, and the saw seems to even sound quieter.
All in all it was a pretty easy job to remove and reinstall the arbor. The hardest part was finding a machine shop that would take such a small job. I finally found friend-of-a-friend that had a research lab at his work and he was able to true it up for me one Saturday.
So if any of you ever do a full-up table saw recondition and measure a lot of runnout at the arbor flange, take the extra effort to get it trued up. The improvement will be worth it.
-Tom H.
Ventura, CA