splitter question

[gimpy]

I thought I had everything square until I put my project together. I have been having a little trouble squaring up my miter cut on the smt and had a question on the splitter I have. The blade is the stock blade that came with the bt3100 and the splitter is an add on. My question is this. When I run a straight edge the length of the blade to the splitter on the right side, it just barely clears the splitter. When I do the same--run the straight edge down the left side of the blade--on the other side, the straight edge just barely touches the splitter as it goes by it. This does seem to put a very small gap between the straight edge and blade (guessing, I would say the gap is 1/32 to 1/16 of an inch at the back edge of the blade). Does this affect the squaring (90*) that I am trying to get on the piece of wood?

Just guessing at the gap. I don't know if I could adjust the splitter with the shims or not. That"s how close the the splitter is. I have not tried adjusting the splitter/shims today. But did do so a few weeks ago and did not notice what it was doing until I checked it today.

Also, does it have the same affect when I rip a 45* bevel (which I did recently and have had problems with square) with the fence on the left side? Does this nudging it over actually knock it out of square to be noticeable? Answering my own question, I would say yes, but don't really know.

The blade looks to be at a 90* angle to the table and the smt is at a 90* to the blade (close as I can tell using 90* triangle). If I get a chance next weekend, I will try to recheck all of the setup settings on the saw.

[Stytooner]

What you actually have is a riving knife rather than a splitter, but the following goes for either.
The straight edge should not really touch the knife when touching the front teeth and the rear teeth on the blade. It can touch on the right side as long as there is no loss of contact on the teeth. That is perfectly flush with the teeth on the right side.
If you have no contact on the rear tooth on the blade on the left, then it must be adjusted. This will effect squareness of cuts and will tend to pull stock away from the rip fence.

These adjustments need doing pretty precisely.
If the knife is out of adjustment as it sounds like yours is, it can lead to kickback. This is a crucial alignment.

[poolhound]

it would be a good idea to first measure both the blade and riving knife to see how thick they are. The RK should be thinner than the blade, if its thicker then no amount of adjustment will help. IIRC the stock blade is a thin kerf ~ .100" You mentioned having an add on RK, what is it? do you recall if you got a TK one or a one for a full size blade (1/8")?

[gimpy]

Thx, Lee and Jon. I haven't gotten back out to check further/closer, yet, but I measured along the blade and not the teeth edge. That might make quite a bit of difference. Will do some checking this weekend. Supposed to be in the 60's then.