Martynas Valunas's homemade table saw
Martynas Valunas writes:Hi Matthias,
Here are some pictures of the table saw that I built.
I started with the
arbor. After many considerations (as it turned out - not enough) I came
up with this idea and went to a local metal turner, who made this
arbor for me.
The arbor is very simple and convenient to mount, but it's not good: two
ball bearings are pressed into a solid piece of steel that acts as a
pulley for a V-belt and flange for a saw blade. Inner diameter of ball
bearings is 12mm which is the worst part of this design because the main
shaft (a M12 bolt) is too thin to be sturdy enough. In the beginning I had
a lot of belt vibrations, which caused the saw bade to vibrate. After I
got rid of them I use the saw quite successfully.
Matthias comments:
The M12 shaft is probably a bad idea - too thin. Metal fatigue may
cause that bolt to snap spontaneously after years of use. Between the drive belt
on the arbour and the wooden cabinet, the blade should stay inside the saw if that
ever happens.
Progress of lifting and tilting mechanism. I used
22mm steel rods from car shock absorbers as glides. 4pcs cheap
Chinese linear ball bearings (which had lots of play, so I had to shim
them so that they had tension against all sides) are pressed in a piece
of oak along with two M20 nuts for threaded rod. I put those nuts so
that the threaded rod would turn easily, but have no play. Where the threaded
rod exists the lift mechanism there's a big ball bearing sandwiched
between two thin nuts to act as a thrust bearing. Lower down on that rod goes
the last piece - a small gear.
The whole assembly can slide up and down pushing only on one end. At first I used only one bearing on each bar which didn't work out. The mechanism would not move parallel and it would jam. Then I added one more linear bearing for each bar and butted them against each other to get 15cm of bearing length, which allowed the sliding motion without binding.
Above right, you can see the finished lift mechanism
being mounted on hinges. The area that gets mounted on a hinge is circled in
red.
I also include an image from the SketchUp model, because I don't have a
photo of a completely finished mechanism and I figured that it could be
hard to see what is where.
Here you can see the front of the saw with lift crank and
tilt lock, which is another bad thing in this saw.
Tilting on my saw is very hard. It takes time to set it correctly because you need both hands on that handle and no hands left to hold the angle while tightening. I saw John Heisz's table saw was made with the same type of tilt and I thought it couldn't be that bad, so I made mine this way. Now I wouldn't do that.
Matthias comments:
That sort of tilt gets harder to operate the further the motor is from
the axis of tilt. John Heisz's saw has a small motor close to the arbour.
The tilt adjust on my dad's
Felder saw works similar, but also with the motor closer, and a
really sturdy lever to tilt the saw with. That one is also hard
to adjust.
The underside of the saw with, unfortunately, everything
covered to repel dust. Although, you can see gears!
The table top is made from poor quality birch/pine plywood, 80x40mm.
A steel tube acts a rail for Biesemeyer-style fence.
A 25mm wide aluminum "U profile" is glued in a
routed groove to act as a miter slot.
The saw after use for couple weeks. The fence is made from the same 80x40mm tube with
cam-lock which doesn't work as well as commercially made ones, but it's good enough
for me. I also made big drawer for sawdust which turned out to be a great
idea.
Some specs:
table: 150x92cm
max distance from blade to fence: 72cm
motor: 1,1kW 2870rpm capacitor run (from a water pump)
saw blade: 10" (254 mm)
left tilt
Matthias comments:
Fun to look at the pictures. I see a homemade bandsaw, homemade disk sander,
homemade marking gauge, and your earlier homemade table saw!
See also: Martynas's bandsaw mill
More homemade table saws:
Homemade tablesaw
Hector Acevedo's
homemade tablesaw
Dad's
homemade tablesawBack to my Woodworking website.
