Post by mikkomononen on Mar 16, 2019 16:34:33 GMT -5
TL;DR: I made extension rails and rip fence from 40 series slot profile. Works really well, costs about 100€.
A little background why I built this. I'm building furniture and I used to have chinese Unisaw clone. I have very small shop, so I wanted to have something smaller, and more accurate too. After some research there were Festool CS70 and Erika 70 Ec left to choose from. I chose Erika. I did not specifically need the pull-saw functionality but I was quite excited to see if I could get rid of cross cut sleds.
There was big grin on my face when I first turned on the saw. No more vibrations and blade wobbling
But I think I cried a little the first time I used the saw. I was so used to the heavy Biesemeyer style fence that the little thing on my Erika felt like a joke.
After few projects I noticed that there were something wrong with the saw, sent it back to dealer and got it back few months (!) later with note that it's working fine. Eventually I figured out that the front rail of the saw was bowed, but I was quite unhappy about the rip fence otherwise too. I might me a little heavy handed but just never had consistent and reliable results from it. In retrospect, Erika (nor CS70) might not be the saw for me.
So to make the saw usable for me, I looked into after market fences. The only one available here is the Incra LS. Too big and too expensive. Shipping from the US would have costed around $500 which left those few extra options out too (i.e. Russeau, Accusquare).
While searching for how to attach the Incra LS to Erika, I came across few interesting setups on some German woodworking forums. That let me into thinking that maybe I can build something myself from 40 series (Item) slot profiles.
The first problem was how to to attach the profiles to Erika. I made bunch of complicated dovetail clamps, but then I noticed that the center of the dovetail happens to be 20mm from the top, so I should be able to use the holes at front to attach the profiles. As it turns out, the nuts made for 8mm slots happens to just fit inside the dovetail profile. So I put 3 nuts inside the front profile, attached it it back, and then fished the nuts over the holes with a wire (magnet should work too), and added bolts and washers (I ended up using regular M8 washers instead of the fancy ones in the picture) and slid the bolts into the slot of the new profile. The 40x40 rail has 8mm holes drilled at the locations of the holes in the Erika front rail. This allows me to tighten the bolts through those holes. It does not take too much fiddling to adjust the rails flush to the table top.
I made several prototypes of the rip fence itself. There were a lot of problems along the way, like how to keep the fence level. Usually the cross part of the fence sits on top of a rail, but I wanted to keep things simple and have the rail profile at the edge of the table.
I initially had thought of making the fence from 40x80 profile and the cross part from wood, but I found out that wood and anodized alu does not have enough friction to allow them join with nuts and bolts. I had 80x80 profile and some spare 40x40 profile so I thought I'd give it a go. And it worked awesome! I'm surprised how well those glide blocks work. They have some play but not that much that it would affect a tablesaw fence. Because of the quite tight tolerances, it's a bit of a dance to put the fence on, though. Mine lives on the saw all the time, so no problem.
The fence weights over 5kg so it has that Biesemeyer beefiness, and I can restore my old fist-tapping micro adjusting habits The 80x80 feels a bit too chunky for the saw, though. I think I will experiment with a 40x80 profile on its' side, with 60mm or 70mm tall face plate. Face plate is needed, since these profiles have slightly concave faces (it has to do with getting the to join tightly). There's about 0.5mm play at the tip of the fence if I press generously. Luckily that can be fixed with a festool rail clamp.
Lastly, I hope that the new rails will give me back the MacGyver saw feeling which I had looking at some old pictures of Erika in use. I'm already getting ideas looking through some Ruwi accessories. I never found satisfactory design for a DIY dovetail clamp to allow me to attach my own jigs to the saw.
A little background why I built this. I'm building furniture and I used to have chinese Unisaw clone. I have very small shop, so I wanted to have something smaller, and more accurate too. After some research there were Festool CS70 and Erika 70 Ec left to choose from. I chose Erika. I did not specifically need the pull-saw functionality but I was quite excited to see if I could get rid of cross cut sleds.
There was big grin on my face when I first turned on the saw. No more vibrations and blade wobbling
But I think I cried a little the first time I used the saw. I was so used to the heavy Biesemeyer style fence that the little thing on my Erika felt like a joke. After few projects I noticed that there were something wrong with the saw, sent it back to dealer and got it back few months (!) later with note that it's working fine. Eventually I figured out that the front rail of the saw was bowed, but I was quite unhappy about the rip fence otherwise too. I might me a little heavy handed but just never had consistent and reliable results from it. In retrospect, Erika (nor CS70) might not be the saw for me.
So to make the saw usable for me, I looked into after market fences. The only one available here is the Incra LS. Too big and too expensive. Shipping from the US would have costed around $500 which left those few extra options out too (i.e. Russeau, Accusquare).
While searching for how to attach the Incra LS to Erika, I came across few interesting setups on some German woodworking forums. That let me into thinking that maybe I can build something myself from 40 series (Item) slot profiles.
The first problem was how to to attach the profiles to Erika. I made bunch of complicated dovetail clamps, but then I noticed that the center of the dovetail happens to be 20mm from the top, so I should be able to use the holes at front to attach the profiles. As it turns out, the nuts made for 8mm slots happens to just fit inside the dovetail profile. So I put 3 nuts inside the front profile, attached it it back, and then fished the nuts over the holes with a wire (magnet should work too), and added bolts and washers (I ended up using regular M8 washers instead of the fancy ones in the picture) and slid the bolts into the slot of the new profile. The 40x40 rail has 8mm holes drilled at the locations of the holes in the Erika front rail. This allows me to tighten the bolts through those holes. It does not take too much fiddling to adjust the rails flush to the table top.
I made several prototypes of the rip fence itself. There were a lot of problems along the way, like how to keep the fence level. Usually the cross part of the fence sits on top of a rail, but I wanted to keep things simple and have the rail profile at the edge of the table.
I initially had thought of making the fence from 40x80 profile and the cross part from wood, but I found out that wood and anodized alu does not have enough friction to allow them join with nuts and bolts. I had 80x80 profile and some spare 40x40 profile so I thought I'd give it a go. And it worked awesome! I'm surprised how well those glide blocks work. They have some play but not that much that it would affect a tablesaw fence. Because of the quite tight tolerances, it's a bit of a dance to put the fence on, though. Mine lives on the saw all the time, so no problem.
The fence weights over 5kg so it has that Biesemeyer beefiness, and I can restore my old fist-tapping micro adjusting habits
The 80x80 feels a bit too chunky for the saw, though. I think I will experiment with a 40x80 profile on its' side, with 60mm or 70mm tall face plate. Face plate is needed, since these profiles have slightly concave faces (it has to do with getting the to join tightly). There's about 0.5mm play at the tip of the fence if I press generously. Luckily that can be fixed with a festool rail clamp.Lastly, I hope that the new rails will give me back the MacGyver saw feeling which I had looking at some old pictures of Erika in use. I'm already getting ideas looking through some Ruwi accessories. I never found satisfactory design for a DIY dovetail clamp to allow me to attach my own jigs to the saw.