Thread: Table saw alignment - revisited

I have a JET JPS-10TS hybrid saw, which until recently I had been happily using mainly for ripping. Crosscutting was always a bit dodgy due to the crappy mitre gauge supplied with the saw (covered in another thread)......or so I thought

I finally bought a decent Incra mitre gauge, which was a revelation. The Incra can be adjusted to have zero slop in the mitre slot, has totally repeatable angle positions, and doesn't move around at all when correctly set up. This was when I noticed that the back edge of the blade was catching the timber as I performed crosscuts, enough to mark the cut end slightly. This led to an 'excellent adventure' in completely realigning the blade and fence to the mitre slot....

Lacking a dial gauge or other specialised tools, I built a block to secure my trusty digital vernier to the Incra mitre gauge (while still allowing the measurement slide to work). The saw was unplugged, and the shed door locked to prevent my enemies plugging it back in while I wasn't looking.....

Checking a marked tooth on the blade at front and back positions revealed an error of just under 0.3mm !! No wonder I wasn't getting clean crosscuts. My measurement setup exhibited excellent repeatability, even after completely removing and reinstalling the mitre gauge in the slot.

The trunnion bolts ARE a bit fiddly to get at on the JPS-10TS, but can be accessed by removing the dust port. I loosened all but one bolt, pivoting around that bolt to get the required alignment. A few gentle taps with the medium adjusting tool, tighten everything up again, suck blood off skinned knuckles, and the end result is shown on the attached photos. Error between front and back edges of blade now reduced to 0.02mm (about the limit of my measurement technique). The improvement in crosscutting was immediately noticeable - I use an Infinity combo blade, and it now gives glassy smooth end faces.

I then used the same setup to align the fence to the mitre slot as well, in this case adjusting to have the fence kicked out from the back of the blade by 0.1mm (to prevent binding between blade and fence when ripping).

Hopefully I won't need to do this again . The Infinity combo blade stays on the saw, so once I have carefully aligned the splitter to the blade that should be it for a while !