Hi everyone,
I have been using my BT3100 occasionally for the past 10 years. These have been for home repair projects and my cuts were usually pretty accurate. However I have been wanting to get into more precision work and have started reading and learning about properly aligning the SMT and rip fence. I have noticed that when I am locking down the fence the back of the fence moves to the left before it locks. I think that it has something to do with the adjustment of the sliders on the front of the fence. I have set both of the sliders to the same position but I still get movement. The only way I can lock the fence straight is to physically hold the back of the fence while locking it down. Even then I'm not 100% sure it still doesn't creep over.
One thing I did notice about the sliders is that the part that rides in the t-slot is significantly smaller than the t-slot itself. The tab on the slider measures 13.5mm and I believe the t-slot is at least a couple mm larger. I would think that the fit should be close enough to just allow the slider blocks to move freely but in its current form there is a lot of front-back play. I even reversed-engineered the sliders in CAD so I good try decreasing the amount of play on the sliders.
Has anyone seen anything like this or have any ideas? I'll try to grab some pictures tomorrow.
Thanks!
Joe
I have been using my BT3100 occasionally for the past 10 years. These have been for home repair projects and my cuts were usually pretty accurate. However I have been wanting to get into more precision work and have started reading and learning about properly aligning the SMT and rip fence. I have noticed that when I am locking down the fence the back of the fence moves to the left before it locks. I think that it has something to do with the adjustment of the sliders on the front of the fence. I have set both of the sliders to the same position but I still get movement. The only way I can lock the fence straight is to physically hold the back of the fence while locking it down. Even then I'm not 100% sure it still doesn't creep over.
One thing I did notice about the sliders is that the part that rides in the t-slot is significantly smaller than the t-slot itself. The tab on the slider measures 13.5mm and I believe the t-slot is at least a couple mm larger. I would think that the fit should be close enough to just allow the slider blocks to move freely but in its current form there is a lot of front-back play. I even reversed-engineered the sliders in CAD so I good try decreasing the amount of play on the sliders.
Has anyone seen anything like this or have any ideas? I'll try to grab some pictures tomorrow.
Thanks!
Joe
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