Domino cross stop problem

howieb

Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2012
Messages
15
Hello!

I am a new domino 500 owner, and I am joining some 84" hardwood boards to make a wider board.  I thought I would use the cross stop accessory to make this easier, but it seems that they are off.  On the first pair I joined, I made the first hole 2" from one end at a common pencil mark on the narrow setting, then did the remainder of the holes at the middle setting almost 8" apart so that the final hole would be about 2" from the end.  I reversed the second piece and then worked the same way from the other direction.  In the end, the last hole was more than 1/3" off.

I thought maybe I screwed up the settings on the cross stop.  However, I checked very carefully on the second set of boards, and again was about 1/3" off.  So I measured with my caliper between the pin and the paddle on both sides, and one side was about 3/100" different than the other.  Over the 11 holes for an 84" board this would add up to over 1/3" difference.  There was no sawdust left in the mortise, and I was careful not to put excess pressure on the stops.  I don't think it was technique, but I'm willing to consider it may have been.

So then I did some research on the board.  Someone seemed to have this same problem 7 years ago.  I don't know if it was resolved or not.  Seems many people don't use the stops at all.  I don't know if they discovered the same problem and gave up, or just never trusted them.

I can't see any way to adjust this short of replacing with a cross top that is "correct".  Is there?  I plan to call customer service in the morning to see if they can help.

Thanks,

Howie
 
I found that it helps to not pull the cross stop pin really tight against the mortise. That little bit of flex in the cross stop when pulling it hard to the side of the mortise stacks up with each one. Athough at 1/3" I think you need to make the adjustment to the pin.

Seth
 
xtrememtnbiker said:
http://www.festoolusa.com/media/pdf/domino_xl_df700.pdf

Page 12 tells you how to adjust the cross stop pin.

Head slap!  Of course! I should have looked in the 700 manual.  Thank you so much.  This is the second adjustment I've needed that was either not present in any manual or in a different manual.  The first was the blade angle adjustment on the TS55REQ (not in any manual, but found in a thread here).  I'm happy that there's a way to do these things, but I wish they would do a better job of documenting them, perhaps as part of setup.

Thank you!

Howie
 
howieb said:
xtrememtnbiker said:
http://www.festoolusa.com/media/pdf/domino_xl_df700.pdf

Page 12 tells you how to adjust the cross stop pin.

Head slap!  Of course! I should have looked in the 700 manual.  Thank you so much.  This is the second adjustment I've needed that was either not present in any manual or in a different manual.  The first was the blade angle adjustment on the TS55REQ (not in any manual, but found in a thread here).  I'm happy that there's a way to do these things, but I wish they would do a better job of documenting them, perhaps as part of setup.

Thank you!

Howie

No worries. Someone else shared it with me when I had trouble. I was told it's because the 500 manual is for the older style Domino so you had to use the 700 manual to see how adjust it.
 
Howie,

Sorry for the issues.

If we included this as part of our setup video or some other "getting started" material, I think there are people who may tinker with it needlessly and possibly cause the calibration to be worse than the out-of-box calibration. I think a lot of other brands of tools do require calibration out of the box, but ours are factory calibrated. Of course, there's always situations like this were it may need to be tweaked.

In the future, please feel free to call or email us if you need assistance or have questions. We'll point you in the right direction.

Shane
 
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