My own alignment frustrations

[Eagan]

Greetings, all

Trying to get my bt3000 aligned; sailor's problems inspired me after I had long given up and looked for other answers. So far, I've taken these steps...

1. Take the saw off the stand and level it. Clean sawdust out of saw and re-mount it on the stand.

2. Test and confirm that my right angle is square. Try square, protractor, and pencil and paper test; everything agrees it is.

3. Following manual, align rails. Check and triple check.

4. Rebuild sliding miter table using directions found here. It slides easier then before and doesn't wiggle; thanks to whoever did such a nice job with the write-up.

5. Set miter fence to the 90 degrees on smt. Align smt to 90 degrees to blade. Taking care - as always - not to hit teeth

6. Make a test cut, using clamp to make sure board doesn't move. Inspect cut; half degree out of alignment still.

7. Recheck rails. Recheck smt. Set fence to half degree off. Make test cust. Inspect cut; now 90 degrees.

8. Use square to test fence to blade angle. It is going to only hit the front of the blade. Based on the angle of the square, I'd expect it's about a half degree off. Take time to try and figure out how the cut comes up 90 degrees. No answers.

9. Realign fence. Hold wood against fence and move slowly past stationary blade. Doesn't drift away so I think the rails are good.

10. Decide to write and see if any of the BT3000 experts have answers.

Thanks for the coffee break; I've got to go back and see if the fool thing actually wants to cooperate. In the meantime, anyone got any theories?

[crokett]

If the fence is out of alignment, the cut won't be straight unless the SMT is also off to cancel it out. I've always used a square to set angles on any saw, got in that habit in Jr high with the tablesaw there that didn't have angles marked on the miter gauge, just stops at 90 and 45.

[Eagan]

Is this right?

Well, the good news is that the miter fence is set to 0, the square says it's correct in relation to the blade, and the cuts come out at 90 degrees.

The bad news is that the distance from blade to smt at one end is 9", at the other end is 8 3/4.

I'm willing to believe in operator error, but this sure doesn't seem right.

[Uncle Cracker]

The bad news is that the distance from blade to smt at one end is 9", at the other end is 8 3/4.

Holy crap!

[Salty]

Someone check that guy's tape measure.

That's not really possible...is it?

[mpc]

When setting the SMT fence to the "90" tick mark on the SMT tabletop... are you reading from the back edge of the SMT fence or from the back edge of the little red plastic piece? The SMT tabletop is calibrated assuming your SMT fence has that red plastic piece. It sticks out about a quarter inch from the SMT fence. Without that, your SMT fence will be several degrees rotated from what Ryobi intended and that might be why your SMT table needs to be crooked so much.

Ryobi part number 969191-002 "MITER INDICATOR" on the exploded parts diagrams for a BT3000 saw. (item #5 on that diagram)

mpc

[Eagan]

Thanks! That's a great and practical suggestion. Regretfully, I do have the piece and it is correcty in place. Or maybe not; the saw has me rather confused.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate the advice and ideas. Please, if you have more ideas, offer them.

Eagan

[Salty]

OK, so if mpc is on to something here, it may be possible that the SMT table is out of parallel from the saw table and the SMT fence would have to be set at less than or greater than 90 according to the gauge.
This is an exaggeration of the effect.
Maybe???

[Eagan]

Thanks

Picture excellent, and much appreciated. Spent another evening on the saw - trying to align your saw does count as working in the wood ship, no?

Not that I think it counts for anything, but the smt is out of alignment the other direction.

I suspect aligning this thing is beyond my skill sets. I'm going back to orgami

[sailor55330]

I think that picture is a great description. That is what can be very confusing about this saw. If I interpret it correctly, not every part has to be in perfect alignment with each other to actually produce a square cut which is how the saw differs from a fixed table saw that has trunion adjustments. It was definitely more challenging to align this saw than any other saw I have seen. My concern is that with so many possible adjustment points, will the saw be able to hold alignment over time. Think about it for a second: You set the miter fence with a moving plastic stop set on a plastic pivot. Plastic wears quickly. You set the quick stop with an eccentric. You align the SMT base--3 screws have to be loosened. You align the SMT top, 2 more eccectrics. On top of that, you have to assume the rail clamps and or rails are already in perfect alignment. By my count, that is at least 8 fasteners not including the rail clamps that potentially must be adjusted to get alignment. In my book, every point that can be changed can be a cause of alignment slipping even if it is unlikely. Many here say yes, but only time will tell. Now that I have my saw finally aligned to where I can live with it, I do kind of like the SMT, but I would not trust it for angles other than 90 at all and I will always check the fence with a square before the cuts.

Just some thoughts.

[pecker]

Greetings, all

Trying to get my bt3000 aligned; sailor's problems inspired me after I had long given up and looked for other answers. So far, I've taken these steps...

1. Take the saw off the stand and level it. Clean sawdust out of saw and re-mount it on the stand.

2. Test and confirm that my right angle is square. Try square, protractor, and pencil and paper test; everything agrees it is.

3. Following manual, align rails. Check and triple check.

4. Rebuild sliding miter table using directions found here. It slides easier then before and doesn't wiggle; thanks to whoever did such a nice job with the write-up.

5. Set miter fence to the 90 degrees on smt. Align smt to 90 degrees to blade. Taking care - as always - not to hit teeth

6. Make a test cut, using clamp to make sure board doesn't move. Inspect cut; half degree out of alignment still.

7. Recheck rails. Recheck smt. Set fence to half degree off. Make test cust. Inspect cut; now 90 degrees.

8. Use square to test fence to blade angle. It is going to only hit the front of the blade. Based on the angle of the square, I'd expect it's about a half degree off. Take time to try and figure out how the cut comes up 90 degrees. No answers.

9. Realign fence. Hold wood against fence and move slowly past stationary blade. Doesn't drift away so I think the rails are good.

10. Decide to write and see if any of the BT3000 experts have answers.

Thanks for the coffee break; I've got to go back and see if the fool thing actually wants to cooperate. In the meantime, anyone got any theories?

Between step 4 and 5 you are supposed to first get the SMT to slide parallel to the blade.
Page 33 of the manual ( http://bt3000.com/Manuals/BT3000-Manual.pdf ) shows a crude way to do this, but if you haven't done it first, all your other steps won't work correctly.

[Eagan]

Between step 4 and 5 you are supposed to first get the SMT to slide parallel to the blade.
Page 33 of the manual ( http://bt3000.com/Manuals/BT3000-Manual.pdf ) shows a crude way to do this, but if you haven't done it first, all your other steps won't work correctly.

That was step 3.

[Hoover]

Is your front rail bent at all? Check the front 2 tabs that hold it to the saw front. I had one of the tabs loose and gave me something like what you are experiencing.