Minimax TS owners - Need guidance changing scoring blade belt

[Michael Koons]

I reached out to my MM rep on this but thought I'd ask this community as well. I need to replace the scoring blade belt on my Minimax SC4 Elite and it looks pretty involved. I tried the access panel in the body of the saw but a lot of the machinery is blocked by the motor. (Only one motor shared for the main blade and the scoring blade.) There are 4 bolts holding the table to the cabinet but I can't seem to lift the table off to get access to the belt shafts as the entire blade mechanism is connected to the table.

Has anyone done this before and have any guidance?

[David Kumm]

Go to Charlie Plesums solowoodworker.com site. Charlie covers a lot of territory with MM stuff. Dave

[Erik Loza]

Mike, I emailed you.

Erik

[Michael Koons]

Thanks David for the link. I would not have been able to do this without Charlie's site's help. He has a section on changing the scoring blade in his "General Notes and Training" page. I figured I'd document my process here for anyone else who may need it for future use.

First of all, I needed to change the scoring blade belt on my 5.5' Minimax SC4 Elite table saw. This saw has a single motor for both the main blade and the scoring blade. As stated in Charlie's site, you DO NOT need to take the saw apart. Everything can be done from the access panel on the saw.


Open Panel.jpg


After disconnecting power, the first thing I did was tilt the blade to 40º. You cannot see the pulleys and shafts you need to connect the belt to unless you tilt the blade. The picture above shows the open panel and you can see the motor is tilted way down. This will give you access to the belt shafts.

Scoring Blade.jpg

To attach the actual belt, you have to fish it through the pulleys as I showed above. You can't actually see the D pulley because it's obstructed by the motor mounting plate but it's pretty easy to get to. D pulley is the most important because it's the one that moves to allow the belt to be attached. It's spring loaded and you can see the spring on the right side of the pic. It takes a lot of work to move that pulley enough to get the belt attached but it can be done. The way I did it was to attach the belt to A, C and D. Then I pulled as hard as I could on the link between A and B to get enough slack to get the belt over the B pulley. I had to pull really hard to the right to move the spring loaded pulley enough but was able to get it eventually.

I hope this helps anyone who may need it.

Mike

[Lloyd T. Wilson]

The advice on how to change the belt for the MiniMax SC4e scoring blade was great! Once I knew to tilt the blade to 45˚, it took about 5 minutes to remove the back panel, place the belt around the tensioner pulley (right most pulley), feed it under the motor pulley, loop it over the motor pulley, loop it under then over the pulley just to the right of the motor pulley, depress the tensioner spring by pushing on the tensioner pulley, and feed the belt around the scoring blade pulley. The only part I had to redo was turning the belt inside out so that the rougher side rode on the motor pulley and the side with the brand name faced up as it passed over the motor pulley. Not sure whether this last part was necessary, but I believe the rough side riding on the motor pulley will be less likely to slip.

Only problem I faced was with finding a U.S. supplier for that particular type of belt. I emailed two U.S. companies whose catalogues indicated they carried the correct belt, but neither responded. I ended up ordering the belt from Europe.

A few minutes after installing the belt, I used my slider to cut up a 4' x 8' x 1/2" plywood sheet to make drawer carcasses. The old scorer belt broke after using the slider for 3.5 years. Not sure why. The drive belt for the table saw blade looks fine. Nice to have the use of the scorer again.

Thanks again!

[Tom osborn]

What belt did you use. Can’t find the info in the Manuel have a sc4 W mini max

[Michael Koons]

What belt did you use. Can’t find the info in the Manuel have a sc4 W mini max

I ordered the belt 8 years ago, but here's the details from SCM parts that I ordered it from...


Part number: 0000605959G

FLAT BELT 15 1020 TIPO 150 MEGADYNE (40.0M059)