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Thread: Aligning Rip Fence on Sliding Table Saw

  1. #1

    Aligning Rip Fence on Sliding Table Saw

    Hi all,

    I just purchased a new Robland NX410 Pro Combo machine. I finally took delivery of the unit last week and have been slowing getting it all set up. The instructions are quite abysmal, and there is no mention how to adjust the rip fence to be parallel with the blade.

    I know on a normal table saw with miter gauge tracks you would align the fence to the miter track and then the blade to the track so everything is parallel, but there are no miter gauge slots on the surface of the saw. There are several allen bolts on the fence that I am able to loosen which give me some play in the fence, but I have no idea how to go about getting it parallel to the blade.

    Any ideas/tips/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

    Thank you!

  2. #2
    You don't align it to the blade at all. The blade and the rip fence are aligned to the slider. Clamp a piece of plywood to the slider, cut it, then align the rip fence to the cut edge.

  3. #3
    On the saws I am familiar with the saw trunnions are fixed and everything else is aligned relative to that. First get the sliding carriage tracking parallel to the blade, then line up the rip fence to the carriage. You can start with a straightedge held against the saw blade plate and fine tune the carriage alignment based on the cut- no heeling of the blade within the kerf. Then make a straight line cut on a panel and align the rip fence to that edge. Some like to have the rip fence toeing out slightly, but parallel works for me. Toeing in is no good. Sorry, I'm not familiar with the Robland adjusting details but the principles should work for any saw. I know on older Griggios the round fence bar angle is adjustable on its mounting studs, while older Martins adjust the connection between the two parts of the rip fence's moveable head.

    If you have to adjust the sliding carriage for height and/or level with the main table that will take more futzing around, as will adjusting the outrigger table to be in plane with the main carriage. Again, some like the slider to be slightly higher than the main table- I prefer to have them the same height.
    Last edited by Kevin Jenness; 03-29-2021 at 9:23 PM.

  4. #4
    Pictures may help. Maybe the below may give you ideas on how to adjust yours.

    K3-fence-rail-attachment.jpg K3Winner-rip-fence-toeout.jpg

    On Felder/Hammer saws, the fence's adjustments are made by manipulating the fence's round-steel rail in the Y- and Z-axis (e.g. front-back, and up-down respectively). This round-steel rail is attached to the table via a flat steel bar by the orange-circle bolts, which are tightened and left alone. The green-circled bolts are the ones manipulated to adjust the fence. Raise or lower the round-steel rail in the Z-axis to adjust the fence 90-degree perpendicular to the table. The goal here is to get the fence rail parallel to the surface plane of the table.

    Adjust the round-steel rail in the Y-axis to adjust toe-out/parallelism of the rip fence to the blade. I would think twice about adjusting the rip fence to the sliding table, thus giving it a toe-in relative to the blade. My sliding table is 0.003" toe out to the left of the blade. My rip fence is 0.003" toe out to the right of the blade. To eliminate the rip fence's toe-out, I use a 0.003" shim between it and the fence's carriage to get it to perfect parallelism to the blade.

    If this picture below is that of your machine's rip fence, then it appears there are two bolts (orange circles) that index the fence rail to the table when re-installed using the two plates with kip levers (green circle). Maybe adjusting them to adjust the parallelism of the fence to the blade? I am not sure how you can adjust the 90-degree perpendicularity of your machine's fence.

    nx410fencerail.jpg

    Someone else will chime in about another approach to this issue.

  5. #5
    Hey Wakahisa,

    The problem with adjusting those bolts is that if the left most bolt that touches the cast iron (the upper red one that you circled), it catches when I lower the jointer table back down. So I had to adjust the left most bolt so that it doesnt touch the cast iron when the table is flat.

    I was able to use the method Johnny described above to get the fence square. The other issue I had was the reading on the fence scale didnt match up with what I was actually getting for a cut, but after some fiddling I managed to get it dead on.
    63876543910__A2EDBDDD-B200-4BAB-9245-ACDEE9469944.jpg

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