Thread: WC2000 + Triton saw flexure = P'd off

Hey Jon

I have been a critic of the triton WC but in this case something is seriously wrong and I would suggest that it is perhaps the way it has been setup. I would take it all apart and start again.

My experience with the triton is that MINE had small inaccuracies that were annoying but nothing like what u are experiencing.

Take it apart and slowly re-assemble it and then install the saw. Might work!

Then once it cuts properly you can go to tradingpost.com.au, sell it and get the TSC10HB. Youll be much happier.......



cheers dazzler

Originally Posted by dazzler

Take it apart and slowly re-assemble it and then install the saw. Might work!

I seriously doubt a full dismantle and reassemble is required here. the problem seems to be in the saw itself or the way its mounted. Jon still hasnt replied to my earlier post asking if he has the height winder attachment or whether he is using the saws onboard height adjuster. with the saws own height adjuster even half raised you can get tahe variation jon mentioned

Originally Posted by doug the slug

I seriously doubt a full dismantle and reassemble is required here. the problem seems to be in the saw itself or the way its mounted. Jon still hasnt replied to my earlier post asking if he has the height winder attachment or whether he is using the saws onboard height adjuster. with the saws own height adjuster even half raised you can get tahe variation jon mentioned

But if he pulls it apart he can clean it properly.....

cant sell a dirty machine

Now I'm peeved. Thought I'd test my own setup and the blade moved some 2mm off true! Not the saw body though, it's rock solid and doesn't move at all... but I got arbour float!

Hardly surprising considering the miles of timber that have passed through it over the years; what does surprise me is that I haven't noticed it before! My cuts are straight and smooth, no charring or back-marking; none of the usual signs of arbour/blade movement...

Odd!

This is a brand new saw and WC2K so it comes with the height winder, an orange one (not gray). The deflections that I reported are wholly within the saw and with the onboard height adjuster of the saw set to zero.

Hence pulling apart and reassembling the WC2K will obviously have zero impact on the saw itself.

Thanks to those providing their deflection figures. As mentioned, it is clearly evident that the brackets holding the saw to the base plate are responsible for the deflections. Mine (5mm) is clearly worse than the others (0 mm). So I am now convinced the saw is faulty and will attempt to swap it over at Bunnies. If they want to send it in and leave me without the saw, then I will just buy the stabilizer bracket and be done.

Finally, this may not be a new feature, but my new saw has a "micro" adjuster knob with a range of 6 mm for fine tuning. During assembly I noticed the knob wouldn't turn because the bolt clamping the two pieces together was so tight they couldn't slide over each other. So I loosened the bolt a little, allowing them to slide via the screw thread turned by the knob. The two pieces that slide over each other are in the connection chain so play here is responsible for deflection. I found that tightening back up the the micro adjuster bolt (so it is unusable, as it came from the factory) reduced the deflection by about a third.

Will follow up what happens

Thanks

Jon

They say a picture is worth a 1000 words. Here are some pictures demonstrating the deflection of the Triton saw.

Triton_Saw_NoLoad_31_15_mm.jpg shows calipers indicating a distance of 31.15 mm between the blade and the base plate when no load is applied.

Triton_Saw_30_50_mm.jpg shows shows effect of pulshing the base plate so that it moves towards the blade. The caliper reading was 30.50 mm, i.e. a deflection of 0.65 mm

Triton_Saw_33_25_mm.jpg shows shows effect of pulling the base plate so that it moves away from the blade. The caliper reading was 33.25 mm, i.e. a deflection of 2.1 mm

The deflection of the other end of the blade from the base was almost zero. You can see that I was only using my thumb to apply the load, i.e. not an excessive force.

It is pretty obvious that the defllection is introduced by the riser bracket . As mentioned I will look at another saw but I suspect it will be the same. If so, then I think this this must be considered to be a serious design flaw. Anyone disagree and considers this size deflcetion is acceptable?

Ah, when loosening the nut that holds it together you get movement that few, if any others have found.

Remove the micro adjuster and nyloc nut. The nyloc nut may be cross threaded, causing an increase in friction, requiring you to loosen things too much.
May also just be that the nyloc nut is new and stiff and a bit of movement will wear it (The nylon washer part) in.

How much movement do you get when the offending nut is tight?

How tight or loose things should be is one of the hardest aspects of assembling equipmet to explain.

The height micro adjuster should be usable, but firm. With the height winder kit, I don't think I have ever used my micro adjuster.

Steve

Originally Posted by TritonJapan

With the height winder kit, I don't think I have ever used my micro adjuster.

me either, and after all the trouble i went to initially making sure it was set up right, now it just hides in the dustbag where it cant be got at

If you sit the saw body on a table and then press the chasis, of course it's going to move. The saw is held by a large black bracket at one end and this will allow some movement if pushed like that. Mine was the same and when in table mode, in the WC itself, I could move the blade if I pushed and forced it either way. However, I didn't have any problem with wobble or burning when feeding timber and it was extremely accurate. I think your technique is the problem here. It's a hand held power saw don't forget, not a fixed table saw.

In the original post jon46089 stated that:
The main culprit is the flexure in the plate for height adjustment. Tightening the nuts so the height adjustment cannot be used makes things a little better
From this one would assume that he was using the height adjustment on the saw, however in a later post he states:
This is a brand new saw and WC2K so it comes with the height winder, an orange one (not gray). The deflections that I reported are wholly within the saw and with the onboard height adjuster of the saw set to zero.
If the height winder is being used then the saw should be set at maximum depth of cut and everything locked up tight.
I think he needs to take the whole setup along to the Triton club and let someone there who knows what they are doing have a look.

Don't know about everyone else, but I am looking forward to finding out what the solution to Jon's problem is.

So far the symptoms and causes seem to be a real mix of technique, expectations, setting, and product.

I have had one saw come back with a cracked body. This caused all sorts of problems, but due to the location of the crack, it was closed whenever looking at that part of the saw. Once we found it, the penny dropped.

Come to think of it, one other saw I came across had a coach bolt head that was a tad thinner in the crossection of the square part that caused some sideways play in the angle trimmer. This customer was a design engineer for Toyota and he just put the problem down to crappy foreign products. Swapped the coach bolt and the saw was great. Annoying how such a cheap part can have such an effect on the product.

When demonstrating, I often have people lift the table top from underneath and comment on the play. Usual response to this is that I have never had a piece of timber try and push the table up from underneath. Most timber is too busy lying down on top of the table wondering what happenned to the birds and the bees that used to visit it.

Jon's photos are fairly similar in that when ripping, the pressure the saw receives is to the best of my knowledge from front to back, in line with the blade. If the timber pushes the blade from the side, something is pretty wrong.

I guess that more than the rest of us, Jon wants to get ripping, without spending time trying to solve a problem that he wasn't expecting.

I hope he can make it to a club. Will be more fun that just swapping the saw.

Steve

i recently bought a brand new p.s.t, and as today at work i had some melamine kick boards to rip down, i thought 'perfect first job for the triton'.

i took advice i was given on another thread and fiddled with the set up, i finally got it exactly parallel to the fence but cutting 1mm under the stated size, i'm happy with that. however the saw that comes included is a total shocker, it must be the cheapest crap they could find, seriously. when i tried this wobble test, it was a shocker, mega movement. the handle is almost falling off, it seems to be a lighter yellow colour too???.

but after saying all that, it cut the kicks perfectly, exactly to the size i was after(i allowed for the 1mm,lol)

has anyone else found this 185mm triton saw too be such poor quality? i think i will chuck it and stick my makita in there sometime.

but at $26 bucks you cant really complain i suppose.

Firstly, i agree with SPROG that some if the info posted by Jon has been contradictory, however:

Originally Posted by TritonJapan

Don't know about everyone else, but I am looking forward to finding out what the solution to Jon's problem is.

Me too

Originally Posted by TritonJapan

..... when ripping, the pressure the saw receives is to the best of my knowledge from front to back, in line with the blade. If the timber pushes the blade from the side, something is pretty wrong. Steve

Correct me if im wrong, but if we follow the correct procedures for using the triton system, the force on the blade is ALWAYS from front to back with one exception, cove cutting.

for all other cuts, ripping down a fence parallel to the blade or crosscutting using the protractor or extension table for back support ( oops, sorry Gumby, nearly missed the crosscut sled again ), even mitre or taper cuts are set up so that the force is straight down the blade.

Im getting to the point that i dont think we can solve this one online, but i hope that it is resolved and Jon gets back to us and tells us what it was

I forgot to make it clear that EVERY bolt (including the main and micro winder bolts) was tightened hard before I measured the deflections. Apologies for any confusion.

As far as ply or MDF (melamine) is concerned, I used the WC2K yesterday to cleanly cut a 900mm long sheet of 16 mm thick ply like butter. But I thought I mentioned I have no problems with sheet material earlier. FYI, my final test for setup alignment a few weeks ago were with 19 mm Tassie Oak and that also worked great. The 25mm thick jarrah is something else though.

Sorry, but there WILL be a moment (twisting force) when cutting and once the timber starts to move there will be an additional moment from the blade itself. The force may be in the direction of motion on the blade, BUT the saw is supported off the blade centerline. So there definitely is a moment (= F x R). While sawing the moment could get as large as what I applied with my thumb.

I acknowledge that perhaps I want to rip too fast and not take 10 minutes with a creeping feed rate. However as mentioned the saw was not moaning about it until the jarrah started to move. So you are only GUESSING about my technique Gumby, but I am interested in FACTS. You don't know whether some bean counter decided to use a thinner bracket to save a few cents in the period since you owned your saw, for example.

The plain FACT is that all the saw deflection occurs because of the deflection of JUST ONE bracket at the height adjuster end. My first thought was to just remove the fine tuning height adjuster mechanism and add a small 1/8 or 1/4 inch thick stiffening plate on top of the 1/8 inch thick Triton height adjustment bracket, i.e. between the end of the base and the saw body. This plate would only require two holes. I could always put the fine tuning height adjuster mechanism back later and a thick plate would still allow height adjustment, but just coarsely, and bevel angle can also still be set.

Then I discovered two tapped holes (M6) in the orange body of the saw that are hidden by the height adjuster bracket when the saw is set for max depth. The photo shows a bolt that I have inserted in one of the holes with the saw raised to illustrate. Drilling just one hole in the height adjustment bracket would allow the saw body to be supported (bolted) much closer to the base plate, like the other end, and this would almost remove the deflection. Of course this would also remove onboard height adjustment but there is a separate height adjustment in the WC2K, so no matter.

Perhaps table saw performance can be coaxed out of the WC2K and a Triton saw by incorporating this simple modification? I am busy with my router for a while, but will let everyone know the outcome if I perform the mod, in which case I'll repeat the deflection tests and then rip some of the same jarrah.