Long time since visiting, trying to get back in the saddle!
I have somewhat an open question, but looking for suggestions/ideas that may help me, if you don't mind.
I am a bit at a loss and frustrated. Since I got a Sawstop (3HP) a couple of years ago, I haven’t really asked much of it at all until yesterday. I needed to rip an 8/4 30” long piece of soft maple and the saw really struggled, to a point that I had to stop the saw as I was getting quite nervous having to push so hard.
Of course my first thought was that I was having alignment issues, so I checked and checked again, even made minor adjustments to the fence and checked the blade alignment. They are absolutely spot on (and I tried the fence to be absolutely parallel and then made it 1/64” wider at the end, as the manual suggests as an alternative). I used the splitter, and also tried with the the riving knife. I raised the tooths so the gullets show, and also tried with just the teeth showing. I even changed the blade (I have a fairly new WW-II, which is as good as it gets, but I even tried the stock Sawstop, which is inferior, but was 100% new). Yes, they are both 40 teeth hybrid cut… but honestly; the machine was struggling even with 1” test boards.
To be fair, even as the fence and blades were spot on, it felt to me that as I fed, the board started to pivot a bit (my stock had fresh edges and flat face from the jointer, though). I was also using a magna-board featherboard just *in front* (edited) the blade… and that actually felt like it was making things worse.
Right now, after all the adjustments, it has shown some minor improvements… but I can’t imagine I should struggle in pushing that hard with that 3HP monster and a good blade (not just the 8/4, but the 4/4... and no, the stock is not under a ton of stress and doesn't seem to be pinching anything more than normal.
So, any ideas what I am doing wrong? Look at the burn marks after forcing to finish the rip on the boards. And this is the second attempt… the first one burned much worse! Pushing them through was anything but fast. It was slow and had to push hard once the blade was fully engaged.