(continued from part II)
Quality Impressions
Everyone has different standards so read this for what it is worth. I¹ve seen/used a number of industrial machines and took notice of how they fabricate their adjustment mechanisms. Things that get frequent tweaking (like spindle heads on a vertical mill) usually have dovetailed ways with lockdowns and cranks. Less frequently adjusted things have shims and lock bolts. The MiniMax uses pinch bolts everywhere. To adjust, you loosen the locknut, turn the bolt, and then reset the locknut. A very sturdy way to adjust and keep adjusted, but there always is a small amount of movement when the locknut is cinched that often requires "fiddly" tweaking. The good thing is that "everything" is adjustable! I can¹t think of one alignment that cannot be changed on this saw. The table tilt has a stop bolt that makes return to 90 degrees easy. The trunion lock bolt uses two washers that get bent to conform to the trunion¹s curve. A curved faced washer or other mating part here would be a nice refinement, but what is there works. The table on my saw was dead flat; I only needed to square it up with the blade. Loosen the cinch nuts, turn the bolts, retighten, repeat. It takes a while, but I¹ll only have to do this once. The blade guide assembly tracked the blade fine as set at the factory with no offsets from full up to full down. If I did have to adjust it, there are four pinch bolts to tweak. The mechanism that raises and lowers this part is operated by a hand wheel that engages a sprocket and chain attached to the shaft of the blade guide holder. It stays put on its own but there is a lockdown wheel provided. An industrial machine probably would have a rack and pinion system here (like on a drill press), but this system is identical for all purposes and aside from a small amount of backlash felt at the handwheel, perfect for easy guide position tuning. All the hand wheels are plastic, but well made with brass bushings for the shafts and setscrews. The tension wheel is labeled "open" and "close" so I assume it¹s not made specifically for the saw 8^). All the sheet metal is painted (drip/run free) and of a very heavy gauge metal, about 1/8" thick (the doors are thinner). The motor belt is adjusted with a jackscrew, very nice to set the belt, but potential is there to really over do it! Access to the nuts here is a tad difficult but easy enough. The motor pulley is machined steel. The blade guides are described as ³euro style². Basically a round disk with a shaft that rides in a bronze bushing.
Using the Saw.
It turns out that the blade I wanted was "backordered" so being eager to fire up my new toy I called the folks that make the Timberwolf blades and ordered a 1" and 1/2" blade (blade length is 145"). They recommended a 3 TPI profile for the 1" based on my request to be able to resaw 10" of white oak. The blades arrived a week later and the 1" was installed that night. I tensioned the blade to the proper place on the MiniMax¹s built in tension gauge but the blade was still way too loose. I decided to make my own tension gauge from a very sensitive dial indicator I have handy and proceeded to set the blade to 15000 psi. The tension indicated on the MiniMax gauge was double what they indicated should be correct. Everywhere I read stated that all bandsaw ³factory² tension gauges are junk and this one in no exception. They work by measuring the compression of the spring in the tension mechanism. This spring is only about 1² long and prone to wear. I made a mark on the gauge based on what I had found with my dial indicator. After several tension/detension cycles and returning the setting with the dial gauge, the factory gauge I had marked was different!
I set the wheel tilt and tracking with ease. No problems here! The blade teeth were just over the edge of the rim as specified on both top and bottom wheels. Next I fine tuned the table squareness and proceeded to fire up the saw. Wow! Nice and smooth! Next job was to make dust so I cut a 2x4 into pieces free hand. The cutting was not as fast as I had expected, but good enough nevertheless. Next job was to adjust the fence for blade lead. I grabbed a piece of oak, freehanded a line cut, then set the fence angle to match. A quick test showed I could cut 1/16" pine veneers from my 2x4 with ease and consistency. Next came the big test, resaw a 6 foot long 10" x 1" oak plank into two 1/2" pieces. This was difficult! Basically I could only cut about
6" per minute. I also ended up turning the blade thrust guides blue in the process. Way too much work was involved pushing this board through! It almost seemed the blade was dull, but it still felt sharp to my fingers. Maybe I need a different tooth profile. I¹ll wait for the "freebee" 1" blade to arrive to compare, but my initial impression of the Timberwolf blades is not very good. The Yahoo MiniMax mailing list also tends to confirm that Timberwolf blades are not that great. The saw never bogged down however, plenty of power! At least with the blades I have a lot of choices for vendors so I am not discouraged. The saw did fine. My only gripe was with the blade thrust guide.Impressions.
Everything is adjustable! This is great since I can dial it all in perfectly. A more expensive industrial machine costing multi-kilobucks probably would have shims and nicer ways to set things, but the pinch bolt arrangement works and holds tight. The guides that come with the saw seem ok, but I¹ll probably look for something that can handle more force. The included guides use bronze bushings, I¹ll go for bearings given my experience with resawing. The tension gauge is totally useless so I¹ll rely on my home made device from now on. The fence gauge is also basically useless, but I¹ll rely on a more accurate ruler instead. This saw has plenty of power and a nice big table. It will serve me for years! After doing all this tuning and cleaning, I will really be able to qualify the Jet and Laguna 16² saws when I get a chance to see them up close.
-Bruce