Re: Table Alignment
Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 12:29 pm
reible wrote:I don't know where the point of danger come in but at some point the error will be enough for it to be dangerous to use because of it.
Lots of bad things happen when the error gets to some point so I try and stay away from that. Maybe .010 is fine but .011 is not, so you bump something after you get the .010 set and it ends up at .011...... bang kick back! Now if I'm at .003 and I bang it pretty hard I'm still not likely to get to .011. This is called a safety factor.
Now I have a nice thin kerf blade I like, it has a kerf of .097". The body of the blade is say .077" this gives me .020 of none contact. That is .010 on each side of the blade. Now this just happens to be a high quality blade so it runs true and straight with thermal expansion slots and anti vibration slots and made of a good grade of cold rolled steel and laser cut. How ever not everyone here is willing to spend the money for good blade..... blade defection come in to play on a cheap stamped blade, so where or what is the safety factor on such a blade? I don't know and I doubt anyone here does. Lots of factors come into play, can you identity them?
I feel safe at .005 and even better at .003". This has no bearing on how accurate I can and do cut. That is a different ball game. Wood has enough quirks that can make life difficult without having to worry about alignment at all. Even if an accuracy of a project was 1/4" I would still keep the alignment right where I have it. Does this make since to everyone or are you so turned off by this whole thing to not ever care???????
Ed
I guess I am in your camp, Ed. I try to set my table, blade and fence up to .001" and typically achieve .002-.004". Then I have the peace of mind that if anything bad happens its due to operator error not due to the way the saw is setup. After all alignment is not something you do every day. Once set I normally check it only every year or two unless something appears to be out of alignment.