Early Father's Day gift to myself

[reible]

I might just decide to add the woodpecker one to my collection. I use my green one all the time for setups but I like the addition of the 20mm holes on this version. Once setup it seems the mft stays pretty much right on but I like to do a check before cutting to be sure.

Ed

[reible]

I did indeed order the Woodpecker version and it arrived today. It is un-boxed but it has been a long day so that is as far as I care to go.

We found out a former neighbor died last summer. We had lost touch over the years but it was a shock since he is younger then I am and was very active, well when we knew him anyway. It is his wife's birthday today and my wife wanted to check to see if they were at the address we had for them and when she looked them up she found out. So the card was a birthday/condolence greeting. I guess there maybe more people that are gone that we just have not heard about but this was a shock.

So I'm looking forward to get the MFT out and seeing how this square works.

Ed

[reible]

My excitement was short lived.

I started by trying the square to align the MFT and that worked well. It is slightly smaller then my other version but that really will not matter as the size of these is plenty large enough.

20180302_124451_resized.jpg (228.69 KiB) Viewed 12699 times

I verified the MFT with the older green version and then used the new woodpecker one to see if it agreed and it did.

20180302_124423_resized.jpg (314.05 KiB) Viewed 12699 times

So not on to the new feature that I was hoping would be useful. The Woodpecker version has 20 mm holes that allow it to align itself to the table and do some either 90 degree or 45 degree cuts without having to set up the rest of the table equipment. So here is where the problems showed up.

The square comes with a pair of 20 mm dogs, the red things you see plugged in to the holes. The dogs, fit through the square and into the holes on the MFT top. Any singe hole on the square and table work but the issue comes when you want to use two holes on the square, the second pair of holes only lines up a couple of places....... most places they simple do not fit. A few places you can twist the dogs in but then it was a real pain to get them back out.

In this picture the dogs are not fully seated and an example of the twisting idea I had. It was a pain to get them back out but I did with some mechanical advantage.

20180302_125524_resized.jpg (264.25 KiB) Viewed 12699 times

This is not good. I've already informed Woodpecker but I don't really know if this is an issue with mine or if it is more wide spread.

If you ordered one make sure you test it out. I'll let you know what woodpecker says. When you pay a premium price this stuff has to work or it is not worth it.

Ed

[Skizzity]

My excitement was short lived.

I started by trying the square to align the MFT and that worked well. It is slightly smaller then my other version but that really will not matter as the size of these is plenty large enough.

20180302_124451_resized.jpg

I verified the MFT with the older green version and then used the new woodpecker one to see if it agreed and it did.

20180302_124423_resized.jpg

So not on to the new feature that I was hoping would be useful. The Woodpecker version has 20 mm holes that allow it to align itself to the table and do some either 90 degree or 45 degree cuts without having to set up the rest of the table equipment. So here is where the problems showed up.

The square comes with a pair of 20 mm dogs, the red things you see plugged in to the holes. The dogs, fit through the square and into the holes on the MFT top. Any singe hole on the square and table work but the issue comes when you want to use two holes on the square, the second pair of holes only lines up a couple of places....... most places they simple do not fit. A few places you can twist the dogs in but then it was a real pain to get them back out.

In this picture the dogs are not fully seated and an example of the twisting idea I had. It was a pain to get them back out but I did with some mechanical advantage.

20180302_125524_resized.jpg

This is not good. I've already informed Woodpecker but I don't really know if this is an issue with mine or if it is more wide spread.

If you ordered one make sure you test it out. I'll let you know what woodpecker says. When you pay a premium price this stuff has to work or it is not worth it.

Ed

That sucks. I'm sorry to hear that.

[BuckeyeDennis]

I seriously doubt that Woodpeckers’ hole locations are inaccurate. But I wondered about the dimensional stability of the MFT top, with changes in humidity.

The article below, by an MDF manufacturer, says that MDF can change in both length and width by up to 0.3%. Your two dogs look like they’re about a foot apart, so that dimension could theoretically change by up to about 1/32”.

http://www.koetterwoodworking.com/contr ... ncement-2/

Festool may well use a better grade of MDF (or whatever it is), but I’d give long odds that it is not 100% dimensionally stable. But assuming that it expands and contracts equally in both length and width, the holes would still maintain an accurate 45 & 90 degree alignment.

[reible]

The Festool top is a different type of MDF but the design of the Woodpecker square is of should have been designed to accommodate. Perhaps the design simply will not work but without that feature it is just an over priced square. And without the advertiser features I don't thing I need of want it.

Ed

[reible]

The results of my conversations with woodpecker are that they will take another square and test it on the three MFT's they have as well as do a optical measurement and if it fits their equipment they will send it to me to see if that fixes things. Since this is a one-time tool I'm not sure how they have stock but glad they do.

Looking forward to checking out a square that works on their equipment to see if it works on mine. If not then it will be more likely the my table has issues and I have to decide how to proceed. I can still do a return. But I would rather have the functionality if I could.

Ed

[dusty]

The Festool top is a different type of MDF but the design of the Woodpecker square is of should have been designed to accommodate. Perhaps the design simply will not work but without that feature it is just an over priced square. And without the advertiser features I don't thing I need of want it.

Ed

You are a "DREAMER".

Not one of those that we hear about on TV but a dreamer still. Those guys are in competition, Ed. I'm curious though. Which one works with the Festool items? My guess would be the more expensive one.

[reible]

So while others might have been out having fun today I was out "testing". I used the new and the old square and went hole to hole for all the possible mounting locations both horizontal and vertical with the square in 90 degree, 180 degree and 45 degree modes. I only attempted to get two holes in any mode.

Here is a photo of the start:

IMG_5690sac.jpg (303.72 KiB) Viewed 12543 times

I then took a picture each time it didn't fit, like here:

IMG_5692sac.jpg (279.63 KiB) Viewed 12543 times

From this I was able to count the number of locations that did not fit. In this case 3 locations. I then did a drawing so I could see them all at one time like this:

ScreenHunter 28.jpg (46.87 KiB) Viewed 12543 times

If this was as bad as it got it would be too bad. How ever with the square located so the common hole and the other hole were used like this:

IMG_5695asc.jpg (323.92 KiB) Viewed 12543 times

Here I had 26 locations that did not work. The map becomes pretty much unreadable at this point:

ScreenHunter 27.jpg (91.75 KiB) Viewed 12543 times

When I tested with the square like this all the locations worked.

IMG_5721sac.jpg (231.12 KiB) Viewed 12543 times

Next I did the square using "vertical" holes like this:

IMG_5722sac.jpg (185.6 KiB) Viewed 12543 times

At least for the moment I gave up on the mapping and just did a count. In this mode there were 7 locations that did not fit. How ever when I used the other hole they all fit. The "arm" with the green tape has a much worse fit rate then the other arm.

Next post we will look at the other square.

Ed

[reible]

So at this point things are not looking good, right? Well let the testing continue.

The second square did a lot better. Duplication the of the first tests had a failure on just 5 places, this would be the worst case and the arm that I would label with the green tape. The when rotated there was only 0 place it didn't fit. Only one additional place was a problem and that was with the "vertical" aspect and guess what the green tape side was involved. That is is it just 6 problems total. Still not perfect but a whole lot better then the other one. Now I wish that it fit everywhere but no such luck. Still 6 is a lot better then 36 so I have to say I'm still not impressed but it shows that the issues are more then the MFT........... or at least I think so.

It is also interesting that in every case the arm that I have labeled the green one is involved in the "no fit". I wish I had the ability to measure the hole spacing differences between the squares and between the green arm and the non green arm, it would be interesting.

Ed