any tips for squaring up the fence on the sliding table

Hi Brice! Good to hear that you like your Erika thus far. I have a good, quick method for squaring up my sliding table to the saw, but it’s easiest to show in photos. I’ll document the procedure when I’m in the shop on Wednesday and post the procedure Thursday morning.

Variance indicators will get you within a few thousandth's of an inch pretty quickly. Runout is usually going to prevent you from getting much better than that.

Hi Brice! Apologies for the delay. 

Squaring the fence on the sliding table is ultimately pretty straightforward. It's important to note that the blade on the Erika saws is skewed very slightly clockwise (roughly the thickness of a business card over the length of the blade), so it's important that you're not squaring to the blade itself. Instead, square your fence to the dovetail edge of the table, which is what the fences index off of anyways when you're attaching directly to the saw. 

Since you'll be indexing off of the dovetail edge of the table, I've found it best to use some manner of square that has a shoulder that will rest in the dovetail. A 7" or 12" framing square is a convenient and economical square that most carpenters will already own. Otherwise, TSO Products and Woodpeckers also make larger squares that would work as well. I have a prototype of the TSO PTR-18 square ( tsoproducts.com/tso-products-precision-system-triangles/ptr-18-precision-basic-triangle/ ) that works great for squaring my sliding table in the shop, but my 12" "Speed Square" works just fine on-site. 

Ok, so for starters it's my preference to use the Universal Fence with the sliding table. I override the detents so the head rotates freely. I deliberately set the fence to a skew, something off of zero. 



Next, slide the table forward until the fence touches the square. Continue to slide the table forward until the fence is in complete contact with the square, making sure that the square is also in full contact with the edge of the saw table. The ultimate intent here is to get the fence perpendicular to the table edge.



Once I'm satisfied that the fence is properly positioned I'll lock the miter gauge, PLUS I've found that adding a "Clamping Piece" to the edge of the sliding table really helps to lock in the setting. 



You should be all set! I've got this down to where I can set a miter, make a few cuts, and then square the fence in a matter of seconds. The miter gauge is REALLY close in its factory setting, but on cuts over 24" it's off by ~1mm, plus the detents can be a little squishy, so I've found it to be worth squaring when processing larger panels, but not as important when making short cuts. 

As a side note, I've found that the metric scale on the fence seems to index off of the slot in the middle of the table. So, I'll use my square and slide it tight to the left edge of the opening, and then slide the fence to where it touches the square. This indexes the fence laterally so that the flip stops are accurate to a tiny fraction of a mm. 



I regularly use my Erika 70 to build cabinet boxes and really like it. I use my MT-55cc to break down the sheets of plywood to manageable sizes, and perform the final sizing cuts on my Erika. I have both the 1m and 800mm table extensions, and have found the 800mm extensions to be a good size in my shop. 

Given that the blade on the Erika is intentionally skewed, if you try to square perfectly off the blade you will likely get burning and/or dangerous binding. Best to square off the table. 

All of the Festool track saws have the blade skewed very slightly to the track to avoid burning the material. Again, it’s about a business card thickness over the length of the blade. Skewing the blade slightly is not unusual in modern high-end saws. I wouldn’t be surprised if the MT 55cc has the same feature. 

When ripping on the right side of the blade I install a shim (a laminate sample works great!) between the extruded fence and the rip fence, which essentially skews the blade the other way relative to the work.

Regarding the “whys”, I’ve learned to just use the saw as it was designed, rather than try to make it work like traditional saws. My assumption is that Mafell figures the saw will be used primarily for crosscutting, so the tool is optimized for this task. 

Hi Arvid! Yeah, it's not so much that a user would get burning, but my experience is that I can experience splintering in plywood and generally a slightly rougher cut when ripping on the right side of the blade. Shimming the fence very slightly when ripping on the right side of the blade has alleviated that issue and now I get very good quality rips.

Thanks for all of the response on this.  Tom, thats an excellent way to square and its easy to do.  I have set it up and it is quite accurate now.....

Im wondering if there is some finesse that needs to be applied to the set up of the long beam that the table slides on.  I think i need to dial that in and it will be even better.....

Its great having a forum!

Thanks again and look forward to my next tool purchases: mt 55,  kss 40(battery), and duo doweller.....

Brice