Shopsmith Forums

Okay, I take back my last post and agree completely with Ed. Installed the laser and put it vertical so I could test it. When it was horizontal, I really didn't see much play even though I pushed back and forth. However, in raising it to drill press mode and tightening it, I see a similar problem to what Ed graciously showed here on this thread. If you only push down on the bracket it doesn't seem to loosen. However, if you push up and then back down it loosens quite a bit. I thought maybe I could tighten it more by hand and prevent any movement here, but it is really a function of the two brackets being connected by one bolt. Any up movement on the bracket simply loosens the bracket from said bolt. Overall, I don't think mine moved quite as much as Ed showed in his video, but it was very similar....to the point that I can see any vibration likely loosening the bracket and throwing off the laser alignment. I have to agree with Ed that this is a bad design and unusable in its present form. I don't know if blue loctite could help the problem or not. I'd have to get some to try, but I think an alternative mount is probably a better solution. One option might be to get a 2 piece shaft collar like Ed showed and drill a hole in it to make it the replacement for the "Small Clamp Bracket" (swap part #4 for the shaft collar). This would make it possible to have a firm connection to one waytube so that the whole assembly won't come loose.

Just as an fyi, below is my pic showing how dim the laser beams are in my shop with my lighting (no flash in picture). Unless I start drilling at night with lights off, these lasers are near useless to me. They need to be 2 or 3 times brighter IMHO.

Thanks Ed for your patience and for bringing this issue to light (pun sorta intended).

It seems like that, spread between the way tubes, bracket design is a case of "form before function", or "re-inventing the wheel". Over complicated, and doesn't work well.

Your wooden bracket is a much better and simpler design. Separates the clamping from the aligning with the way tubes functions.

I think that even better, would be to use "V" grooves like this jig in the 1st edition PTWFE. (the semi circular grooves leave more possibility for slight movement.)
and the clamp part in the back could even be flat.

The observation that the curve is not a particularly good fit to the tubes is correct and if it were a better fit it would maybe make a difference. That may be the difference between mine and ones that might be machined better.

As far as the wood bracket I made, this all started with the question about would a laser that is designed to fit a single column drill press be able to be used on a shopsmith. So I took it upon myself to see if that were possible and as it turned out it was. I simply used a bit to drill two holes on 7" centers then rip it apart and made a way of clamping the two haves together. Nothing magic as at that point I wasn't sure what would happen but it worked. No need for me to make a better or fancy bracket as this one functioned. There are any number of ways to do this and I have done several of them myself for various projects.

It looks like you might be better off to buy the laser else where then make your own bracket to hold it, how ever you want to do that. At this point just about anything you might make is likely better then what shopsmith is selling, and cheaper.

Ed

reible wrote:The observation that the curve is not a particularly good fit to the tubes is correct and if it were a better fit it would maybe make a difference. That may be the difference between mine and ones that might be machined better.

As far as the wood bracket I made, this all started with the question about would a laser that is designed to fit a single column drill press be able to be used on a shopsmith. So I took it upon myself to see if that were possible and as it turned out it was. I simply used a bit to drill two holes on 7" centers then rip it apart and made a way of clamping the two haves together. Nothing magic as at that point I wasn't sure what would happen but it worked. No need for me to make a better or fancy bracket as this one functioned. There are any number of ways to do this and I have done several of them myself for various projects.

It looks like you might be better off to buy the laser else where then make your own bracket to hold it, how ever you want to do that. At this point just about anything you might make is likely better then what shopsmith is selling, and cheaper.

Ed

I did the same thing with the wood bracket after you posted your thread and it works great. Zero problems. I use it all the time, even when I don't really need to.

jsburger wrote: I did the same thing with the wood bracket after you posted your thread and it works great. Zero problems. I use it all the time, even when I don't really need to.

John,

The Peachtree laser you show here looks a good bit brighter for the laser beams than the Wixey one. Hard to compare, but the light level in your shop looks similar to mine. The Wixey laser is hard to see in my shop.

RFGuy wrote:

jsburger wrote: I did the same thing with the wood bracket after you posted your thread and it works great. Zero problems. I use it all the time, even when I don't really need to.

John,

The Peachtree laser you show here looks a good bit brighter for the laser beams than the Wixey one. Hard to compare, but the light level in your shop looks similar to mine. The Wixey laser is hard to see in my shop.

It is hard to compare from the picture in the previous post. I can tell you my shop is very well lit with both natural light with large windows and florescent light. The laser is more than bright enough.

The MK V drill press is in the back right corner of the picture next to the lumber storage and that is where the laser picture was taken. This picture was taken before I built the dedicated drill press but the shop is the same other than that. The drill press next to the door is a 10ER.

I think a strip of rubber on the tube arc of the clamp would help prevent slipping.(or sandpaper!)

Tis also possible that the tubes are closer on the down end so the spacing slightly decreases causing the slippage.???

Semi circle clamps are not perfect.

So, the problem isn't so much slipping on the waytubes as I think it is just that the clamp mechanism isn't stable after tightening. It might be hard to tell in my pics, but the clamps actually fit the curve of the waytubes pretty well on mine. You have two hunks of metal with a bolt connecting them in a center pivot. There's a fair bit of slop in the hole in the Small Clamp Bracket which means it wobbles easily around the bolt. I attempted a low tech fix this morning, similar to one of the ones Ed tried. It was a failure, but I will post it anyway in hopes that it helps illustrate the problem. On the plus side, this gave me some more experience working with my new plunge router. The idea was to make a sort of key that would tightly hold the two clamp brackets in place relative to each other. The clamp brackets are 0.5" thick, so I routed a channel on both sides of a block of wood and it is a tight fit. After tightening the Shopsmith bracket, I thought it would be something to quickly slide on to lock the brackets in place so they wouldn't move (easy on, easy off). Unfortunately, it just doesn't work. Even with this being a tight fit, it only holds on one side of the two clamps and there is still enough give around that center pivot of the bolt that the clamps will rotate relative to each other. Of course, I am forcing it by pushing on it, but I have to assume that smaller movements, such as vibration, will greatly throw off the alignment of the lasers during use. A laser guide is something that you want to be rock solid so that it doesn't move relative to the headstock, table, etc. I have to agree with Ed that I think this bracket from Shopsmith is unusable and I will have to build a wooden bracket similar to what others have done on the forum. If Shopsmith had wanted to make this kind of design work, I think they would have needed to add guide pins between the two clamps, one on each side of the bolt to hold the two clamps in the same horizontal plane. Caveat emptor for anyone that has purchased this item or is thinking about it...

I do not think there is room for pins, but, the outer sides are available for two extensions to mount on the longer clamp part. Those extensions would slide against the same outer sides of the shorter clamp part and thus prevent the two parts from rotating opposite directions(what you were attempting with the routed part on one side).

Thanks JPG. Yeah, that could work. I was looking at the two threaded holes in the Large Clamp Bracket that the Mounting Plate Assembly attaches to. A piece of steel bar on top and bottom could be added with these two existing threaded holes as attachment points. Honestly, I am kind of burned out on working on it at this point. Frustrating to buy a custom solution like this and have it work so poorly. So, I am undecided on whether I want to put more time and effort into making a bad design work, or just go straight to building a better bracket. Going to take a break from this for awhile and come back to it in the future.