First Impressions Of TSO Products MFT Aligned Guide Rail Support Upgrade Kit

[sancho57]

I have had issues with squaring my MFT. After a conversation with Allen Kensley, fmr festool trainer who used to travel with the roadshow and worked at the Las Vegas Festool End User trining site .

He said that there is slop in the rail mounting hinges . He said that everytime He'd move the rail up or down he'd have to use the knob to loosen the hinges and push them against the stop to take out the slop and the rail will keep its accuracy. I got frustrated having to do that so I started using TSO Products GRS w their Parallel guides system.

It looks like TSO Products have solved that issue with their up grade kit.

I must say that its very well made solid and when the knobs tighten it is rock solid. It also comes included in the kit is a metal version of the saw slop. What it is , is a device that screws on to the bottom of your guide rail channel where the alignment pin sets.
MFT hinge alignment pin has some slack in it so I bought one from the inventor of it a long time ago and it was made out of what appeared to be plastic.

The saw slop it takes up the slack so their is virtually no slack in the guide rail.

TSOs version is milled out of aluminum so it is much stronger and durable then the OG one I bought.

Now the assembly was fairly straight fwd and easy to do even for me.

The directions were easy to follow very well illustrated.

The only complaint , well observation really is that the instructions failed to mention that inorder to get the rail  aligned at 90 you may have to adjust the MFTs factory stops.

Which is no biggie really. It took me a bit to figure that out along with a email to TSO support which I emailed them with photos last night (Sunday evening) and I received a reply first thing this morning from explaining what I needed to to do ,  explaining the need to adjust the factory stops.

Im sure most of you know this already, but me being me,

I contacted Allen K and told him I was going to use dogs in the MFT holes to reposition the guide rail and reset the factory stops.

Allen told me that was the best way to do it. Which I havent yet but I will and if there is any issues which I dont think there will be Ill note them in this thread.

So over all,  to this point Im very happy with the up grade kit.

Its rock solid installed on the MFT and will definitely solve the issue I had since day one with my MFT.

Im looking forward to putting it to work on this cabinet job I got coming up.

Im going to use melamine so that should definately put the upgrade kit to the test.

Ill write back with a update as soon as I begin that project.

But so far as In every TSO Products that I have bought, it is very well made and lives up to the purpose I bought it for.

I noticed they got some new stuff I havent seen before but then I havent been to their site in a while. Havent gotten much shop time since I live in Az and were at the hottest time of year right now. Plus I was doing a lot of outdoor projects prior to the heat.  When. I cools down prolly end of Sept Ill be back at it putting my tools to work

 

[gunnyr]

Hah!  I had the same issue with adjusting the stops!  It wasn't until I read only the printed part of the directions that I saw I missed the step.....

With the TSO Upgrade my MFT now stays set up because it now STAYS SQUARE!  I used to use the TSO GRS for all my cross cuts, now I'm moving more and more to the MFT!

 

[live4ever]

I’m debating the TSO product vs the Dashboard MFT hardware…orders of magnitude price difference but one attraction of the latter is being able to use it on custom MFT style benches as well. 

 

[sancho57]

[member=42009]gunnyr[/member]

me to. I got tired of messing with my MFT not getting square cuts so I went soley to using my GRS for cutting sheet good along with TSOs parallel. I for cross cutting as its a time saver compared to the GRS. Ill find out soon enough once I start building the cabinets

 

[rmwarren]

I’m debating the TSO product vs the Dashboard MFT hardware…orders of magnitude price difference but one attraction of the latter is being able to use it on custom MFT style benches as well.

FWIW, I used the MFT Aligned adapter on an MFT-style setup where there is 19mm MDF sitting on top of 15 series 80/20, worked great but it did require me to rotate the TSO adapter plates 180 degrees. Basically, I installed them upside down.

RMW

 

[sancho57]

FYI Since I contacted TSO both by phone and email when i first had this issue, (even though I sort of figgered out what was wrong and how to correct it)

Ive been getting a lot of support from Hans at TSO hes emailed me letting me know whats going on and how to correct the issue.

So I must say they do give very good support when notified of a issue.

 

[sancho57]

Ok so I adjusted the rail by loosening the factory stops I used my WP Triangle square with dogs to align the rail.
This is what i did As I said before this thing makes the rail solid and I have no movement in the rail now. I wont be testing it out for a bit yet. Its still pretty warm here. I was cool today so I skipped the gym and got some things done around the house and aligned the rail to. Hey it was only 98 today but will be back to over 100 tomorrow. It should start cooling by the end of the month then I can test it out.

 

[peter halle]

Mine should come in next week.  Can't wait to see how it functions on my old MFT!

Peter

 

[sancho57]

youll see the brackets will be rock solid. The assy is fairly easy. I mean if I could do it youd have no issues.

moving the stops is simple to. I honestly thought the set screws for the factory stops would be harder to loosen then they were.

Let me, know what ya think. You've been at this a lot longer than I have buddy

Also if ya have a better way or more accurate way of aligning the rail please let me know.

 

[tjskinny]

The upgrade kit definitely helps make everything more solid.  I had to not use the included aluminum rail guide (slop stop) as the angle of the slot in it doesn’t quite match the bracket pin and it caused the rail not to sit on flat front bracket and rock.  According to TSO, this may or not happen due to tolerances.

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[TSO_Products]

The upgrade kit definitely helps make everything more solid.  I had to not use the included aluminum rail guide (slop stop) as the angle of the slot in it doesn’t quite match the bracket pin and it caused the rail not to sit on flat front bracket and rock.  According to TSO, this may or not happen due to tolerances.

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TJskinny,

Thank you for the excellent picture mark-up to help us look for any possible pattern of tolerance.

I will take a look in our customer service call records to see if this shows up as a recurring or outlier issue so we can address it.

And thank you for your business!

Hans

 

[TSO_Products]

TJskinny,

checking our customer service call tracking records, there is no indication of a recurring customer expereince repports such as you encounter. But your report has our eye on the potential issue.

Since the part is designed to appraoch zero clearance among a list of independent components dimensions, making the Guide Rail Locator aka "slop stop" to interfere ever so slight in some set-ups is proabebly better by giving you as a customer the opportunity to remove a tiny amount of aluminum on  one or both sides with a file to settle the guide rail onto the formed 90 degree flanges of the MFT/3 Front Support Bracket.

Your earlier post helps us tweak our offerings - look for a revision to our MFT ALIGNED Assembly Instructions Step 8b. in the future.

Thanks for helping to make us better [smile]

Hans