Jointer Adjustment

[Steve1]

I have a Craftex CX06HC jointer, 46" overall length, helical cutter.

Since recently, when making a cut on something like the 33" pieces I am now working on, by the time I got to the trailing end of the workpiece, I was cutting air.

I thought I had the outfeed table to cutter height set up well but I guess I didn't.  I adjusted the height of the outfeed table and now have equal .033" cuts at the front and back of a test piece.  I actually ended up using equal stock removal as the basis for my height set-up.  I am not seeing any snipe at the exit.

But in my journey to setting it up, I did notice the infeed and outfeed table are not parallel.  With a precision straight edge and feeler gages, I had a hard time seeing any error, but an indicator showed .0035" over 5" .  I trust the indicator more than the feeler gages on a straight edge.  Infeed table drops as you move away from the cutter.

So my question is -- what is the effect of having the two tables not quite parallel?  My test cuts after making the height adjustment look pretty good.  I think I have to use shims to adjust parallelism, so I am in no hurry to take that on if I don't have to.

 

[Lincoln]

That's almost a millimeter, which is a lot for a 46" table. Would be producing concave faces/edges. There's a good article here re. tuning a jointer: www.woodmagazine.com/tuning-up-your-jointer
This happened to mine, though it has a longer table and wasn't sagging as much - was able to get it right via the gib screw as described in the article.

 

[Steve1]

Thank you.

Not a millimeter.  Infeed table is 22" long, so .0035" over 5" works out to .015" over 22".
But that article gives me still another method of measuring it.  Which I rather like, because I have several precision machinist's squares.  Over 12" height, I was seeing about .003" clearance at the top.  See photo before adjustment.

The article says this would cause a concave cut.  It was pretty small, maybe .002" over 20", but definitely there.

So I adjusted the gib screws a bit, and it was definitely better.  I won't put a number to it because they don't mean much when you are talking somewhere around a thousandth.

After a bit of a battle with exit snipe, I think I got it dialed in pretty good