Alf":28f7kslj said:
maybe having to make some adjustments to the fence, while not great, is a small price to pay for the other aspects? It's a noble thing to fight for the greater woodworking good by sending stuff back, but fact is it doesn't get your wood planed...
But as I say, I dunno.
Cheers, Alf
As usual Alf, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head there.
Hello everyone,
apologies for not posting this up sooner but other things have demanded attention for a few days. I devoted waaay more time to this matter than I'd have liked last week, so I had to shelve it and do some work and family stuff. I'm going to try to get everything into this post, including the "fix". It might be a bit long, so get comfy.
Well, I've had the Jet for a fortnight now and over all, as already said, I'm very pleased with it. The fence issue has to some degree been resolved, but before you all organise the street parties I have to say that despite the very impressive attentions of Jet and Axminster the solution so far has come from yours truly. By solution I mean getting the accurate results from the machine I require for this kind of outlay. Of course my "outlay" has now risen to include all the work I've had to do to get to this stage (I'm not finished yet), but as I said to Nick Brown (AKA Jetman): if the machine had been on sale with all its fence niggles sorted, and a higher price tag to account for it, I'd have still bought it.
So the engineer came last Friday morning, seems I misunderstood Ian Stiles of Axminster the previous day when he rang me because the guy worked for Jet not Axminster as I had expected. He had a good look at the machine, checked some stuff like table alignment etc., and then proceeded to measure the concavity of the fence. Now here's an interesting bit, it was considerably cooler in the workshop last friday than when I had originally measured it, and that may or may not have contributed to what he found, that the concavity had apparently shrunk from 0.3 to 0.2mm (although I reckon I could have made it 0.25 without the feeler guage being "tight", but that's by the by). Well within manufacturing tolerances would have been the company line, but credit where it's due he agreed fully that those tolerances weren't really up to the mark when it came to getting adequate performance. He also took note of my other gripe about the support brackets not being flat, and then painted, despite riding on machined cast iron pads, and promised to raise the issue with the designer (remember him? the guy who said the fence was designed concave so it would flex under load? :lol: ) at his next opportunity. This is something I sincerely hope he does because the present design is a real let-down in what is otherwise an excellent idea; IMO streets ahead of anything else in this class in terms of sturdiness.
His opinion was that the problems all stem from the fact that it was all designed from an engineering point of view, rather than a woodworking one, and that really the designers should have consulted people that
use these types of machines about what is really required. Something I think we all agree on, and hopefully a situation which this thread will go some way towards redressing.
As far as my immediate problems were concerned, the Jet guy didn't have any suggestions other than what has already been said. This basically amounts to facing the existing fence with a supplemental timber one to achieve flatness, along with possibly linishing the sole of the brackets to achieve flatness there (easier said than done unfortunately - so I'm inclined to swallow and reset the fence when adjusting its lateral position, not a big job).
When it comes to satisfaction I'm afraid I'm with Alf - I dunno.
The point is, I could stamp my foot till doomsday and never get a flat fence or a straight support bracket no matter how good Jet's intentions are; those bits are simply not made to tight enough tolerances (- yet). I already have their assurance that they will look into how things can be improved, which leaves only the possibility of some form of financial compensation for the bits they don't do properly at the moment (ahem, still lurking Nick?) and whether they are faulty as such could be debated I'll admit.
However, that will not affect the fact that I still have to do the fettling myself, and so for anyone whose interested here's a few pics of the fix I came up with.
First heres a shot of the fence in profile
Notice the gap in the back edge where a T-slot is formed to bolt the support arms to? Well unsurprisingly it's position coincides with the point at which the concavity is worst, in fact the face is pretty well flat between the lower edge and this area. This got me thinking about whether it would be possible to "pull" the fence straight by tensioning the back, since the fence is only 3mm of aluminium at this point with no box section it must be the weakest point.
The return in the top section seemed to lend itself perfectly to this, so i used a 6mm cap bolt (left over from an Ikea KD somethingorother) and a good strong bracket attached with self tappers.
Actually I put in 3 of these spaced out not very scientifically, but it looked about right.
I then tightened the bolts progressively until I got the face as straight as possible. I ended up with a couple of high and low points but the worst point was eventually tweaked until less than 0.1mm.
I then planed and edged 4 pieces: 150mm, 110mm, 75mm, and 45mm wide respectively as per my original test.
The proof of the pudding, as they say.......
All 4 edges bang on square without once having to reset the fence to the table - just how it should be
With a little ingenuity, using 2 brackets for example or arranging the bolts to "push" rather than "pull", this method may be suitable for a number of iffy aluminium fences out there. Although I rather think it requires a gap in the profile to allow the necessary flexing. The only downside I can see possibly arising is due to different expansion rates of the steel bolts and ally fence, I may have to tweak the tension when winter comes - only time will tell. I'd be interested to hear from anyone else out there who tries this to see what results they get.
Now, about those royalties........................
cheers all
Mark
p.s. on a final note, andycktm wrote
Also you seem to be giving good advice out on the later part of the post,but choosing to ignore it yourself
sadly this is something I've always been rather well known for, ah well nobody's perfect.
