How do you rip narrow strips of plywood on a slider?

[Sam Blasco]

Sam,

Can you tell us where you got the digital flip stops from?

Martin.

I made them, or rather modified the existing flip stops with some components I purchased from Siko Products (the displays, sensors & mag tape). Cost was under $1K and three hours of my time.

[Phil Pritchard]

Folks here are talking about setting up machines to thous and the rest. In reality it can't be done without wasting a huge amount of time and effort. It's also unnecessary. Instead every commercial user of a panel saw (slider) needs to learn how to set them up using the sort of technique which is promoted by Altendorf - you do it by ear.... There's a post describing the procedure on the www.ukworkshop.co.uk forum (topic # 11445). It's also applicable to squaring radial arm saws, etc. I check my F45 every couple of weeks this way - it takes all of 10 minutes and requires no expensive jigs, DTIs and the rest of the malarky some people seem to need.

As to precisely parallel cuts it is normal to utilise a secondary fence, such as the Altendorf PALIN which means that you rough cut the strips slightly over width then dimension rip using a combination of the flip/spring stop on the crosscut fence and the secondary fence some way further back along the sliding carraige. Normally I'd just use this technique for re-ripping strips to fit them as the rip fence functions just as well on a slider as it does on a conventional table saw - probably better as it is generally somewhat longer and can be pulled back to act as a proper true rip fence, i.e. one that ends at the back of the gullet on the leading tooth of the blade. Judgement and experience will tell you when to rip using the carraige or the rip fence.

Phil

[John Renzetti]

Hello Phil, I checked the UK forum and posting. Good forum, but it's a good thing I've spent a lot of time in the UK and having a bunch of friends from there or I would never have understood half the terms used.
Good points on setting the free cut by sound. There's a section in the Altendorf manual that talks about setting the free cut on the slider and the toe out of the rip fence.
I have found that setting each just a hair out, say around .002" works well to have the workpiece just clear the blade. This measurement is taken by putting a mark on a point at the leading edge of the blade then rotating it 180 degrees and measuring the difference. A little anal true, I'll have to try your sound method as it does look a lot more efficient. The key point here is to have just a hair of toe-out and definetly not have the opposite.
Phil, Are you the "Scrit" who wrote the article.

Sam, Good talking to you at the Mid Atlantic show a couple of weeks ago.
I think .004" to .008" toe out might be too much. Early on when I got my slider, I found the toe out or free cut of the slider to be around .006-007". This was causing some chipout when using the dado cutter. When I re-aligned it to .002" the cuts were perfect. Blade runout has been mentioned. Even the best industrial blades will have around .002" runout. I believe that anything over .004" is excessive.
Sam, I'm real interested in those digital crosscut stops you designed and made. Could you post or send me some instructions.
take care,
John