Erbauer Plunge Saw - Blade Burn on one side of MDF

[keithy1959]

Hi, I've purchased an Erbauer Plunge Saw ( budget prohibits anything better ). I'm cutting 19mm Moisture Resistant MDF and I'm getting brown burn marks left on the left hand piece, but the finish on the right hand piece is perfectly clean. I've checked the blade is not loose, but I'm stumped as to why its on one side of the blade only.

Any thoughts or observations much appreciated - I'll take the "Should have bought Festool/Mafell/Makita etc" as read - I know

Thanks in advance

Richard

 

[user22161]

Often caused by the blade being out of line with the base. There should be a very slight (few thou) toe out at the back of the blade.

 

[beech1948]

If you are using the blade supplied with the saw then expect it to be of low quality and almost useless. I suggest replacing it with a Freud one from say Screwfix who have both 24 teeth and 40 teeth blades for £16 to £24. Worth the cash.

 

[Eric The Viking]

Toe-in/out as above. My old mitre saw does it, and it's jolly awkward to fix.

Basically the front edge of the blade cuts, and the back scuffs (if it's not set up correctly).

As an experiment, do a full-depth plunge into say, 18mm MDF, and advance the saw by about 2/3 of the blade width, then stop it without retracting the blade. If it is the toe-in/out, the back of the cut will be scorched as you describe, but the front, where the back of the blade didn't touch, should probably be clean. Also look for signs of tearout on the underside of the workpiece, below the splinter strip side, at the back of the cut (where the falling teeth will do it with no splinter strip to prevent it).

Note: I haven't tried this myself, but it is the way I'd check, if I needed to.

If you do try to correct this, the proper toe-in is tiny. If you have more than the correct amount, you risk kickback, and splintering on the "waste" side - the latter might not be an issue, but it will be if you want to keep good edges on both pieces.

HTH, E.

 

[keithy1959]

Thanks for the input guys.

This was the last of a few niggles that made me decide to send it back so I've had a nice trip to Axminster in High Wycombe and came back with the Bosch saw and 2 off 1.6M tracks.

For info, the other niggles were the track easy glide plastics were badly aligned, so the saw jumped when crossing the join. I bought a length of Makita track then so £150 becomes £200
A new blade adds another £20
The depth guage was 2mm out on 18mm !
There is a stupid track lock system that is so badly made, the only way to make it work was to remove it.
Not impressed with the anti kickback device requiring a fiddle to get the saw on the track
The Release/Startup button seemed to be a bit hit and miss, and stuck occasionally.

On saying all that, you get a lot of saw for your money, and most of these niggles could be fettled away or tolerated, but I need accuracy and repeatability first time, every time. If I was just pottering about at weekends it would have fitted my needs perfectly.

Realy pleased with the Bosch though, even if the wallet isn't !!

Thanks again

Richard