Thread: New table saw

I had a 2 x 2 garden shed in the early days, the Triton was dragged outside and set up on the dirt and it built a lot of stuff including my workshop. People knock Tritons but they are damned good if set up properly. I still own mine but it is on permanent loan to a mate who is less fortunate than I have been through no fault of his own. It took me five years to build what I have and I it too was conceived over a lot of beers. So keep plugging away and one day the dream will come true.

I drilled my first hole in my saw tonight, the next one is going to be much larger as it will be a dust port for the cabinet. Why would Felder not have an extraction port for the cabinet, bloody silly to say the least. These machines are so good and then small details let them down.

What did you use to drill the hole in the cabinet chris? How large did you make it?

Originally Posted by delbs

What did you use to drill the hole in the cabinet chris? How large did you make it?

I haven't done the dust port yet but when I do I will use a 150mm clear out fitting. I have used them before, the procedure is remove the lid and throw it in the bin and grind off the small shoulder that the lid fitted into and then screw it to the cabinet. The beauty of these is a 150mm pipe goes straight in or a 5'' flex will fit inside it. This method does leave a lip inside but is is nowhere near as bad as a 5" port that is internally reduced to 100mm like Felder did. To make the hole I will just scribe it out and drill a heap of small holes around the diameter and finish it off with a Dremel or file or angle grinder, whatever works best. At the moment I am installing the brackets to hold the Wixey reader strip for the fence and it should be finished tonight if I get my finger out and stop reading stuff on this laptop.

Sounds good. Would love to see photos once its done. Especially of the wixey fitted

I put a 6" hole in my table saw by marking it out then drilling a clearance hole for a metal cutting blade in my jigsaw. Was easy to do and the finished cut needed very little clean up.

I might try the jigsaw method, that sounds like it is less destructive than my usual way of cutting large holes in cabinets. My dim memory thinks I might have used a jigsaw last time I cut into a saw cabinet. I got the Wixey on and I will post photos tomorrow. I had to pull the auxiliary table off to drill the holes which did not impress me as it then has to be gotten level again.

On a different note does anyone know why there are four bloody big threaded holes in the main table, is this to lift it?

I am going to look at digitising the cross cut fence next but I don't know if the cost is going to be worth the trouble. Multiple stops can be set on the fence so I might just have a senior moment and declare it too hard as I am sure the stuff to do it is not available in Oz.

If the gods are willing and I have done the right thing there should be some photos here of the installation...........

The gods are having a good day! I have included a shot of a clearout fitting for those who don't know what one is. The other one is what I have spent months building and can now get into the organisation of what goes in it. Those that have been in my workshop will see huge changes as the mezzanine shelf has gone along with the tool board that was on the wall where the timber rack and storage unit is now. Getting the stuff into it and organised is not easy and I have yet to get it all thought out. That rack is 4.5 metres long to give you some idea of scale.

I want to revive this thread and report a problem and a fix that I had with my saw. As I posted I ordered mine with a micro adjust head for the rip fence and to ice the cake so to speak I installed a Wixey digital fence. It is a great system, move the fence and get it close on the main scale and adjust it with the winder using the digital readout, no bumping the fence to adjust it and it is very quick and repeatable.

For the whole time I have had the machine I have had issues moving the fence because the floating micro adjusting shoe inside the head was grabbing on the fence rail and no amount of force would move it. To get the fence to move I had to play with the adjuster holding it in a position that allowed the micro shoe to slide. It always annoyed me so eventually I got Felder to send a tech out to have a look and he spent some hours playing with it and ordered new parts. I was always sceptical that the parts would fix it and when they were fitted I was proven right as the problem was no better.

In discussions with Felder I told them that the whole design was wrong and it was never going to work properly. I got fired up the other day and ripped it off the machine and took it around to a mate who has a lathe and we sorted it out by modifying it properly. It now works but I think Felder/Hammer need to re-think the design. I can't criticise Felder NSW for their service as they did everything they could working with a bad mechanical design. I just want to put it out there that if you are ordering a Hammer machine and are thinking of getting the micro adjust head for the rip fence you might find the same issue I did so be warned. When the system works it is a brilliant idea especially with the DRO and I would not be without it. I would still recommend it but be prepared to fix the issues that may occur. Apparently the Felder machines use a different head which does not have the problem or so I am told.

Hey Chris,

Did you ever upgrade or change the 100mm internal pipe directly beneath the table saw blade to the 120mm outlet on the chassis at all?

I was going to ask if it was difficult to do getting access to the chasis in order to replace it as id imagine i would have to take off my sliding table to get access to it. im not sure if its worth the effort of replacing it or just keep it apart of my maintenance of checking and cleaning out regularly

Cheers,
Nathan

Nathan, no I haven't for a couple of reasons, one my health all this year has and continues to be a problem and for the trouble involved I don't think it is worth the effort. The bigger problem is the overhead guard and capturing as much dust as possible and the standard guard is not going to do anything but a poor job. I built a prototype which I posted a few pics of somewhere here in another thread but it was of an unknown material and it fell apart due to me not being able to find the proper glue. The idea was sound and when I feel more up to it I will buy some known material and build another one.

Have you had issues with the internal duct? I used mine at one stage without the cyclone hooked up and had to remove the flex hose to unblock it. I imagine that if a dado head was used without a good dust extractor it could be a problem as it will need a lot of air flow. Another problem could be the air entry might not be big enough, I guess the system as designed filled the EU regulations and that is all Hammer are interested in. I looked at the problem and like you decided the table might have to come off and I am not going there for any money. Trying to square the cross cut fence was bad enough, setting up the table would be a nightmare I have no wish to have.

Oh sorry to hear about your health. I didnt receive the overhead guard with mine. As mines on the roller carriage i was just going to get an air filter anove it to try and help with some of the dust. Dont know how effective this would be

Well ive had thin strips of offcut material get down there but i suppose i could get around this by having a zero clearance insert. Ive had to clean out the internal pipe a few times because of this

Yes same here not interested in playing with the sliding table that thing runs so smooth id hate to do something to it.

Which model clearvue do you have and did you change your hammer ports from 120 to 150?

I have an CV1800 which I have always been happy with. I think it is a very good compromise especially in installation costs but the Max is a far more capable machine in that it will run more open ports. While I was selling Clearvue I imported some 5" flexible hose and it goes onto the machine port but the other end does not adapt to common pipe sizes we have in Oz, duct tape is the answer there as a temporary measure. The small offcuts into the duct seems to be an issue with no answer except a ZCI, let me know how it goes and I might try it.