Successfully calibrated the paddles on my Domino 500

[jcrowe1950]

Hi Folks,

    I was getting a slight misalignment when using the right and left paddles on my D500. So I followed Rick Christopherson's excellent supplemental manual at Festool Supplemental Documents. It was relatively painless once I figured out that it was necessary to raise the fence a bit. The two included right and left replacement paddles reduce the distance from the edge of the mortise to the edge of the workpiece by .006" which solved my issue just fine. I'm not sure why I waited so long to do this....onward to Domino Connectors.

 

[ChuckM]

Precision work ahead! [big grin]

Any reason why new domino joiners leave the factory with the paddles not properly tuned?

 

[afish]

Precision work ahead! [big grin]

Any reason why new domino joiners leave the factory with the paddles not properly tuned?

I too wonder this.  Jcrowe you are not alone I also waited awhile before fine tuning my Domino. Unfortunately just swapping the paddles around didnt work for me.  I had to sand one down but it was very easy and worked perfectly.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Precision work ahead! [big grin]

Any reason why new domino joiners leave the factory with the paddles not properly tuned?

It's probably just a dog chasing it's tail kind of thing. They could spend a bunch of time on it, just to have some rough handling/shipping knock it out again anyway?
I suppose us end users would fall into two groups.
The ones who would diligently dig into this and calibrate it to perfection.
The ones who would run it right out of the box and still love it as much as the others do.

 

[ChuckM]

It's probably just a dog chasing it's tail kind of thing. They could spend a bunch of time on it, just to have some rough handling/shipping knock it out again anyway?

Snip.

If anyone at Festool held that kind of thinking when looking at the subject of precision, they shouldn't be working there. My SawStop was spot-on in its stettings as received (from Taiwan), and so was my DF500 upon arrival. The chances of one of them getting knocked out of factory settings should rest with the 350 pounds plus table saw, not the domino joiner. If indeed the concern was about handling/shipping, it'd be super easy to deal with it: Ship the machine with the paddles pressed in and locked. The only way now to knock out the precision would be to break the systainer AND the body of the machine that houses the paddles.