setting up ts 55 and 75 sqare to base and guide rail?

[blake]

Need a bit of help to probably a very simple solution. I recently purchased a TS-75 saw and begun with my standard procedure with any saw of calibrating the base of the saw square with the blade (I used my 12" Starrett combo sqare for this) making sure my square was sitting on the base where the base would sit on the green strips on the top of the guide rail when cutting. After making the required adjustments and my saw was perfectly square I made a rip cut through 2 1/2 inch stock. The piece was almost a 32 out of square! Now, I noticed on the bottom of the guide rail the splinter guard strip and the two other grip strips are of a different thickness. As a result the back of the guide rail is raised up in relation to the front cutting edge which would change the angle of the saw on a cut. Now the back strips compress when the saw is on the guide rail but not enough to allow the bottom of the guide rail to sit flat on the work surface. I know one method to solve all this is to set the saw square based off of the guide rail by making adjustments after repeatedly cutting stock and then checking the stock for square. But, what about when you are not using the guide rail to make cuts? And also, because of the spongeness of the two other non-slip strips on the bottom of the guide rail, wouldn't the angle of your cut change based on the downward pressure one applies to the saw? Any replies would be helpful!

 

[Warrior]

Blake,

Excellent obsevation. I myself have had no problems with getting square cuts with my 75, but I can see that this is an issue of some importance.
Could we not replace the foam strips (maybe just the outer most one)with the rubber for the edges and eliminate the play from compresion? I'll take a look at my guide rail and check.

Eiji

 

[blake]

Thanks for the reply Eiji! I thought about replacing the two more spongy non-stick strips with two splinter guard strips. The only concern with that that I can think of was that the spongy strips create more adhesion to the work surface than the splinter-guard strips, but it is worth a try. I am curious if anyone else has done such modifications? I am assuming a non-splinter guard strip wouldn't work as the cutting edge strip. But maybe they could be reversed and not even have a splinter guard strip but three spongy strips. I am sure Festool has thought this through and maybe the spongier strip wouldn't give a clean cut to set the guide rail cut line to. Not sure. I think I will do some experimenting. Need to get some splinter guard and spongy strip rolls. Another idea was to find a thinner strip of some kind as well to go a little ways back from the splinter guard strip to help distribute the weight evenly when cutting smaller length-wise stock.

 

[Loren Woirhaye]

It occurs to me that the solution is to put tape on the guide rail
to "bush it up" by the equivalent of the thickness of the rubber
strip MINUS the thickness of the spongy strip.

In this way the guide rail can rest on the work surface as
it was designed to and the saw can be set for a perfect 90
cut.

Alternatively one could bush the bottom of the saw shoe,
but that would cause an inaccurate cut when freehanding
with the saw.  Probably acceptable as freehand cuts aren't
expected to be as straight as jigged cuts.

 

[woodshopdemos]

As I read your original statement, you measured the saw base to blade angle. Did you make a cut and measure that angle? And if so, did  you do that at different applied pressure to the saw when making cuts. I ask because this is the first I have heard of this problem and I andothers have ripped too many boards not to have noticed a discrepancy here. In fact, I use the setup for "jointing" boards. And boards go together seamlessly. I do have a bad habit though. I tend to use the new tool and measure what it does rather than to measure the tool.

 

[blake]

I haven't been around a computer for a while so I didn't realize people had replied to my post. It became apparent to me that there is no way to check the squareness of the saw off of the base of it. The saw base has four points of contact that it sits on and those points glide on the green strip on the guide rail. There is no continouse flat surface to square off of on the base. So, checking material after each cut with the guide rail was the only method a used. Though more tedious than a conventional saw, I managed to set my saw back to its original accuracy. I also went over the different thicknesses of the guiderail strips and came to the conclusion that it was all thought out pretty well. The grip strip can only compress a certain amount and if the pressure on the guiderail is consistent the material cut should always remain square. So, all is well with that. Now, if the saw is cutting square when on a guiderail but not cutting square when cutting directly on material, that is another problem I hope I don't have.            Blake