hi there and cead meala failti
what part the country you from.
how is it at 45 degrees.
someone posted recently something similar. not sure the outcome.
i remember the festool demo guy  showing me that there are some adjustment screws to adjust eh overall angle of the tilt mechanism so that both the 90 and 45 dgrees are calibrated. if you look down from above  i think it is down rear where you pull ou the knob to tilt farther than 45 degrees but on the inside of the tilt mechanism

Hi Alan,
I am in Cork.
45 is a hair off also.
There is a 2mm allen head grub screw at the front which looks like it might be the adjuster for zero. I tried to give it a turn earlier but its pretty stuck. The fact that the manual said it wasn't user adjustable kind of put me off trying too hard until after I talk to the rep tomorrow.
There is as you say almost certainly something at the back end for 45.I will look again in the a.m.

@Peter Hallle
I love the stuff despite this little glitch. Good engineering and design really floats my boat.Saw works amazingly well atm when set by eye.
MFT with QWAS is pure poetry.

Adhmadoir.

Yes I can help. I dropped my saw onto the concrete floor - no damage (typical Festool high quality) but I knocked it out of square. Take a look at the photograph below...

Loosen the angle clamping knobs at the front and back of the saw. There are two screws, A and B, that hold the angle plate (my name for it) in place. If you lossen these the plate can be moved a little either way. Obviously you want to end up with the stop, C, in the right place.

With the clamping screws loose, adjust the saw so that the blade is at 90 degrees to the base and tighten the clamping knobs. Now move the clamping plate so that the stop, C, is against the pin (with the green knob). Then tighten up the crews A and B.

Please let me know how you get on.

Peter

I had another look at my TS55R and the actual situation is that the green knob that allows the saw to be set to -1 deg or up to 47 deg is allowing -1 deg even when it hasn't been pulled out. It sounds as though my saw also needs the adjustment Peter has described. Thank you very much Peter!

I have had another look at the saw and I wonder whether it has been deliberately set up to allow an angle of -0.5 to be set without pulling out the green knob. To me this makes sense - if the factory sets the calibration of the green knob to precisely set zero they are effectively taking responsibility for the user achieving zero when they set the saw up against the stop. I can imagine that they want the user to precisely set zero or 45 degs and the purpose of the green knob is to prevent us from going too far from zero or 45. In the case of the zero setting the stop is only reducing the error by half a deg (from -1 to -0.5) so one might argue that it isn't much use, but at the 45 deg end, the stop is performing a greater error reduction role because the angle extension is that much greater.

I think this is a 'flaw' in the TS55R design.  The original TS55 has two screws (back and front) of the tilting mechanism, these are used to true the 90 degree setting.  With two screws the setting and return to a 90 degree angle is always achieved irrespective of external forces.  In order to achieve the negative angle on the TS55R these screws have been removed and the true 90 degree angle is only now locked at the back of the tilting mechanism by knob at the rear.  This means that, 1) the unavoidable 'play' in the hinge mechanism, 2) any weight applied to the saw by pressing down on it, can mean that the saw doesn't always achieve a return to a true 90 degree angle.  My saw has the same 'problem' as reported by others.  I don't think there's anyway around it as, checking my saw, I can see how you can deflect the saw from its true 90 degree setting by even moderate force.

Troll

Dear Admadoir and Troll

Again I understand what Troll has observed but I do not think that having the one 'detent' stop at the front is an issue. When I swing the saw back to vertical I hold it gently in place and tighten both front and back tightening knobs - it always goes back to the exact spot.

I have recently used the TS55R to do all the angle cuts for a shed that I was making. I was constantly switching from 30 degrees back to 0 degrees with no problem - as the saw was new I did check the 0 degree angle a few times and it was always spot on. It would be quite awkward to have 2 little green knobs (one front and one back) for allowing the extra angles to be cut. You would have to pull both out at the same time and then apply some preessure to the saw. Making fine adjustments would almost certainly be a job for Festool as well.

Peter

I very happy with my TS55R and I don't have a problem with setting it to a true 90 degree angle.  The point is that re-engineering the negative angle function into an older design has resulted in a 'compromise' in the function of the saw.  It's no big deal for me.  However, I will stress that even very moderate pressure on the saw handle (and the play in the hinge mechanism) can result in the likelihood of the TS55R saw being locked inadvertently in a negative angle.  Whether than 0.5 of a degree is an issue depends on the work you're doing.  The truth is Peter I (and many others) don't always treat tools with kid gloves.  It was far better when there was two stops (I can test the two versions back-to-back) BUT I realise that, as you said it, wouldn't be functional to have two green knobs back and front.  And the benefit of the negative cut out-weights the loss of accurately returning to a true 90 degree cut. Pity they couldn't achieve a little bit more negative angle....negative 3 degrees would be ideal.  No doubt at some point an all new design will have one negative angle knob release button that acts on two stops (back and front).

Troll

Rubbish - mine is perfect.

Peter

No. You sort it out - if you are really unhappy why waste time writing about it when you could send it back or get it repaired.

Mine is still perfect.

Peter

 

I really think that on a £400 saw when you take it out of the box it should be set at 90 degrees and you shouldn't have to figure out how to get it to cut square.