|
|
Post by kraftt on Oct 29, 2017 9:08:31 GMT -5
Known problem eh, wonder how long they’ve known about it. Is there an official bulletin mentioning this issue or do they not even tell their retailers.
If it’s known wonder why are they still letting saws leave the factory un-checked. That’s seems pretty cold.
Anyone know mafells warrantee shipping policy for fixing their mistakes.
If someone does send their saw in it would be interesting if you put some inconspicuous pencil marks or other form of identification on main angle guide assemblies both plastic & metal and the base itself to see if they are still there when you get saw back. If they are then we know they’re just shimming the base. Also would be interesting to know if this issue is mentioned with any regularity on the German forums. If it’s not, or rare, then it might suggest they do test and know and are cherry picking for local stock and sprinkling the duds around overseas. (Similar to ordering too many large red metal boxes and needing to unload them lol).
——————————
fwiw - I did experiment with shimming with paper between base and ‘rail’ this morning. I used my wafell guide I made to keep saw glued to rail, removed saw spring to allow gravity to plunge for me, clamped the assembly off an edge to see better and it hits the exact mark into the guard (using the point of an inward beveled tooth) at various progressions of bevel degrees (didn’t check -1 & +48).
Sometime in the future or if anyone is curious I have a messed up section of splinter guard I saved that I can put back on a short rail to test internal shimming. Prob shim my saw about a mm up and that should make it cut into splinter guard on bevels. I’ll do a few at different degrees to see that it cuts in at precisely the same edge on all the multiple degree bevel cuts I try. Obviously it shouldn’t be any different from the test I did above (base & rail) but I’m interested to see what effect internal shimming has, if any, on rail registration, assembly, whatever. Maybe there’s some geometry issues? Just going to use same thick paper shims.
———————————
On a different subject it’s interesting to note how straight forward setting parallel is for base slot to blade alignment if you have a pair of calipers or even a steel rule. Also how wildly off they could assemble the rest of the upper saw and still achieve exact parallel with this method.
|
|
|
|
Post by lincoln on Oct 29, 2017 13:23:34 GMT -5
Made a 45° cut with mine, to check how close to the strip it is - long point of the mitre was about .10mm off, probably less.
Got me thinking...where does it actually say that it should line up dead flush with the strip? Certainly not in the manual, nor the description on their homepage??
|
|
|
|
Post by holmz on Oct 29, 2017 17:37:11 GMT -5
Well I would expect it to line up.
|
|
|
|
Post by kraftt on Oct 29, 2017 21:12:28 GMT -5
Made a 45° cut with mine, to check how close to the strip it is - long point of the mitre was about .10mm off, probably less. Got me thinking...where does it actually say that it should line up dead flush with the strip? Certainly not in the manual, nor the description on their homepage?? In one of those early 2010 youtube videos from NMAtools the salesman says “ … the saw pivots about the underside of the track so no matter what angle is selected this edge is always your cut line.” but i'm not sure I've ever seen an official mafell promotional video making that 'specific' statement. |
|
|
|
Post by holmz on Oct 29, 2017 23:30:42 GMT -5
It is absurd to thing that they would have intentionally designed it not to pivot.
|
|
|
|
Post by kraftt on Oct 30, 2017 0:10:08 GMT -5
Where's the thread or source about this being a 'known' issue.
|
|
|
|
Post by mcnallyfamily on Oct 30, 2017 7:05:55 GMT -5
Made a 45° cut with mine, to check how close to the strip it is - long point of the mitre was about .10mm off, probably less. Got me thinking...where does it actually say that it should line up dead flush with the strip? Certainly not in the manual, nor the description on their homepage?? In one of those early 2010 youtube videos from NMAtools the salesman says “ … the saw pivots about the underside of the track so no matter what angle is selected this edge is always your cut line.” but i'm not sure I've ever seen an official mafell promotional video making that 'specific' statement. Here in the Mafell MT55cc official brochure, at the top of page two, under "Sawing to mark", it states: "even when executing bevel cuts, the tracking pointer always indicates the correct position".
www.timberwolftools.com/documents/MT55cc.pdf
|
|
|
|
Post by chippy1970 on Oct 30, 2017 10:16:34 GMT -5
That's the only thing that worries me with Mafell. I've just bought an MT55 but I had an LNF20 biscuit jointer years ago and when I opened the box from NEW a part of it had broken off and was loose in the box. I rang NMA and the guy just laughed and said oh just stick it back on with super glue. I wasn't impressed. Luckily I bought it from a good dealer who ordered me another one straight away.
|
|
|
|
Post by kraftt on Oct 30, 2017 10:52:04 GMT -5
In one of those early 2010 youtube videos from NMAtools the salesman says “ … the saw pivots about the underside of the track so no matter what angle is selected this edge is always your cut line.” but i'm not sure I've ever seen an official mafell promotional video making that 'specific' statement. Here in the Mafell MT55cc official brochure, at the top of page two, under "Sawing to mark", it states: "even when executing bevel cuts, the tracking pointer always indicates the correct position".
www.timberwolftools.com/documents/MT55cc.pdf
I think the concern here is the bottom edge of the trimmable Splinter Guard. brochure
|
|
ntj1
New Member
Posts: 6 
|
Post by ntj1 on Oct 31, 2017 17:53:03 GMT -5
I did the test mentioned in the thread, in regards to shimming between the base plate and rail, a single piece of card ( Foxes biscuit box) on each side of the rail, wasn't enough to correct the error but 2 pieces did the trick I did test it 5, 15, 30 and 45 and it was spot on. I went to measure the thickness of the card but the battery in my Vernier was flat (no 50th gauge on it get exact measurement) but it was showing 1mm or slightly over. I will try again with other rails tomorrow and see if the results are the same. My friend who has just 'upgraded' from a ts55 checked his upon my request and the result was the same as mine, is his also faulty?
|
|
|
|
Post by kraftt on Oct 31, 2017 19:15:51 GMT -5
So that’s a good question. Do they all cut a bit over on 45º and we were never promised otherwise… or does the manufacturer of the plastic guide housings tolerance allowance per a run vary meaning one end of the extreme is right on the edge and the other extreme moves it away up to a mm and it's a luck of the draw.
Or the tolerances are always good, but with mating of three different parts - plastic guide housing / laser cut steel guide / cast base plate, not to mention drilling the two pins on each end that register laser cut guides, mafell chooses to err on the side of being able to fine tune by adding height rather than throwing parts in the bin. One direction can be fixed the other not.
If it really is a ‘known’ issue (“it is known Khaleesi”) then considering how fast you can slap one of these together after you have done a few, (even the baseplate slot to blade alignment being pretty fast & simple), I’d have to guess that the most time consuming task would be shimming since they would all be a hair different. Perhaps whomever is assembling them is meeting a labor price point mafell likes so they look the other way & fix the squeaky wheels later.
Mafell definitely isn’t going to chuck your saw and send a new one, but they could be replacing guide parts. However for this to be going on for some time, known, it seems unlikely they would have relied on bad individual parts and not had their vendor send a new batch stat.
If it were me and I didn’t have a messed up s.g. to play with I would put the rail aside, clamp an mdf straight edge on top of another piece of sacrificial mdf (maybe shoot some brads for flex), and run the saw against the straight edge as a rail guide to test shimming internally. Again I’m saying if it were me. And if it were me I would have laughably zero qualms about removing and replacing the base plate. After all some slave was tasked with performing it a fast as they could originally and I’m sure a lot more ocd.
fwiw - I used the saw on rail the day after I removed base plate and anyone who’s cut a s.g. knows that for the rest of your life you will be finding little tiny bits of red rubber everywhere. No red rubber debris, beautiful clean cuts and I even had to rip some casing lengthwise where it was too wide for inside corners is closets etc. I just threw them into a loose kindling stack to try and make some kind of rickety level for the rail base with only perhaps the bottom rubber of the s.g. gripping the one stick I was cutting with the saw / rail combo flexing / tilting etc. I was so impressed that I set it to 45º to make another pass to knock down the sharp hidden corner. The MT55 got to ride in the the front seat home with me, with it’s own seat belt, for being such a good boy.
|
|
|
|
Post by kraftt on Nov 3, 2017 13:52:50 GMT -5
Since the Ubermen over at mafell won’t chime in and leave us & their dealers in the dark to make up myths I had a thought today about why they may bias the bevel beyond the reach of the guard. Of course you should always cut on a flat surface, but material isn’t always flat sheet and even if it is the table/cutting surface can flex. I.e. they understand this is a portable saw. Rail flex can lift/move the middle of the saw base away from the rail. The greater the flex the higher the center of the saw raises away the rail. At a 90º cut, flexing isn’t much of an issue to the carbide tips deviating from the s.g. But with strong bevels rail flex draws the blade right into the s.g. I put on my old s.g. to test this and put a dowel under one end of the rail so it would bend. Even with my ‘wafell’ attached and tightened (it really just keeps saw flat on rail but doesn’t stop excessive flex) the base moved away under the center of the saw. Added pressure only makes it worse. Because I felt I didn’t have enough little pieces of red rubber sticking to everything already I made a quick bevel plunge where flex wouldn’t be that great unless I applied extra pressure. I made sort of a Chiropractic adjustment as I plunged. (not recommended).  So maybe you get fewer complaints by accounting for some rail flex vs complaints about cutting a mm away on bevels (?) |
|
ntj1
New Member
Posts: 6
|
Post by ntj1 on Nov 5, 2017 12:24:33 GMT -5
Just an update to this, I emailed mafell directly and sent pics of the cut, I got a response saying that there are tolerances that they work between and that could I measure how far from the sg the cut is and from there they will let me know if the saw needs to be returned under warranty, they also said I will need to send the rail along with the saw, so the info the guy from NMA gave me seems to be correct.
|
|
|
|
Post by aas on Nov 5, 2017 13:49:37 GMT -5
I think this 'saw and rail' match up is confusing us... all the rails are the same right?.. but not the saws. We can put various Mafell or Bosch (and now Metabo) saws on the same rails. (yes I know, they should all be the same!)
So when we complain the MT55 doesn't cut on the splinter strip at 45 degrees... easiest thing is to look at the saw and rail together. i.e., has this rail been used with another saw that cut the splinter strip closer to the aluminium profile at 90 degrees than the MT55 does.
I might be wrong, but it's the only explanation I can think of.
|
|
|
|
Post by kraftt on Nov 5, 2017 18:40:38 GMT -5
Just an update to this, I emailed mafell directly and sent pics of the cut, I got a response saying that there are tolerances that they work between and that could I measure how far from the sg the cut is and from there they will let me know if the saw needs to be returned under warranty, they also said I will need to send the rail along with the saw, so the info the guy from NMA gave me seems to be correct. I think you mentioned that NMA added or embellished that the reason for returning rail with saw was that the "saw was calibrated to the rail" when you pressed them for a reason why they needed the rail. That reasoning is difficult to accept when the blade used can also affect this It seems more likely Mafell requests the rail with the saw for the reasons aas states. |
|
