Clamp table issue :-(

[Bill Griggs]

Originally Posted by sean9c

That fence is about the only thing on the EZ1 that you care about being accurate and staying square to your saw track. It's puzzling to me why you'd have it a piece that slides and is clamped to another piece that can be moved. Again, it seems to me, that a more accurate fence would be one that indexed off the face of the SME that makes up the perimeter of the EZ1. It's the same track your B300 is clamped too. One can't move without the other moving, the way it is now they're independent of each other.

The SSME that attaches the Bridge is fixed in place.

Thanks for watching.

Bill

[foamx]

Originally Posted by Dino

If you can post few pic's?
Some times after drilling and before screwing
a spec of saw dust can do the damage.
We need to double check everything because the sane time we have
a new and better extruder.
tx
d.

Dino,

Good to hear from you. Thanks for jumping in. You can get an idea from these. The right side of the extrusion is higher than the table top. All four of the channels in the table have this issue somewhere along their length. It's not much of a difference but it has proven to make square joins difficult. Flat has to be flat and depending on where the workpiece lies it's simply not. The photos show one example as it was the easiest to capture. Several other areas have a more pronounced difference.

Lawrence

[sean9c]

I was more wondering about the repeatability of the locating of the Ridged Connector. I've fiddled with how the Connectors locate when tightened and it seems a hit or miss thing. They're never off much but sometimes the friction between the materials seems to overcome the self aligning feature of the dovetails. If the Connector piece doesn't go in perfectly every time your cut squareness is going to be off.

Originally Posted by Bill Griggs

The SSME that attaches the Bridge is fixed in place.

Thanks for watching.

Bill

[sean9c]

Has to be frustrating.
Pockets look deep enough. Don't see any gaps in the width. Wonder if they're binding there? Also wonder if they countersunk the plastic for the fasteners? It happens sometimes where, in this case, the aluminum extrusion is thinner than the thickness of the head of the flathead fastener. So if you don't also countersink the base material the fastener head pushes into it and makes a bump that prevents the pieces from pulling together.
It'd be interesting, and the quickest solution, to take it apart and figure out what's up.
Keep us posted

Originally Posted by foamx

Dino,

Good to hear from you. Thanks for jumping in. You can get an idea from these. The right side of the extrusion is higher than the table top. All four of the channels in the table have this issue somewhere along their length. It's not much of a difference but it has proven to make square joins difficult. Flat has to be flat and depending on where the workpiece lies it's simply not. The photos show one example as it was the easiest to capture. Several other areas have a more pronounced difference.

Lawrence

[TooManyToys]

There's a number of ways the rails could lay higher then the table surface.

• Miss cutting of the table grooves.
• Over tightening of the rail mounting screws which would distort the metal under the screws head and raise the rail.
• Non-straight rails lifting the end of the rails or waves between screws.
• Debris under the rail.
• High clamping forces when the clamps head is not over the top of the rail itself and the clamp track nut is away from a screw (this type of situation could always cause some distortion, especially with excessive settings with the vice grip type clamps).

I'd pull the rails and check then for straightness, distortion under the screws mounting locations and clearing any debris in the groove. Any company's clamp table like this that uses t-track rails are prone to the issues I noted. For the uses shown in the company images this should be fine for light clamping.

In order to not have those concerns you would have to go to a much more expensive design where the clamping tracks are more like the side extrusions but of a boxed nature where clamping forces have to deal with rails of a depth of 2" to 4". This is why when I built my cutting table I used 8020, so I could clamp with high forces when I used it as an assembly table.