Sure looked to me like a veiled threat. And to other people.
Fourteen.
Oddly enough, the NNTP headers of this message show that it was posted through 'lds.al.charter.com'. That wouldn't happen to be located in... Alabama... would it?
Fifteen.
Yep. The proper spelling is S a t u r n a l i a :-).
Actually, that's -- oh, never mind.
That all? Heck AOL has been gated to Usenet longer than that.
Maybe so... but it's four years longer than *you* have been here (unless you've changed your posting ID substantially).
I started reading usenet in 1991, and first posted to r.w in 1992.
I bet you've been doing serious woodworking longer than I.
Great! How much is the retail, out the door price for those of us that want one of your TS-Laser-Aligners??
I could scrounge up some parts and electronics and cobble something together on the cheap too, but cost and retail are two very different things. Raw cost on a TS-Alingner can not be much over a 12 pack, plus the indicator, but add the engineering, the labor to machine, and some reasonable profit and you end up with $150-$200. Greg
So which product did you buy, since it obviously wasn't the TS-Aligner?
Well, they say there is no such thing as bad publicity.... It's ironic that by choosing to make a controversy out of your original post this fella has caused the words "TS-Aligner" to pop up in my message window no less than 60 times!
I'm starting to feel a bit drowsy.......reaching into my back pocket for the credit card......navigating to Ed's website.....
Dang it Ed, are you sure you didn't orchestrate the whole thing?
(big )
This is pretty close to what I use except I mounted a dial indicator to it. It works for both uses for me.
I have a great sense of humor. However, your "joke" doesn't seem too funny to me. Perhaps that's because the sentence "They must be making more money off that hunk of sheet metal than I thought they were." is not funny. In fact, it's rather disparaging. Many of your comments about me and my products are rather disparaging and completely untrue. I do take it rather personally because my integrity and honor are at stake. I don't sell overpriced, flimsey hunks of sheet metal. I sell accurately machined measurement instruments. And, your disparaging remarks can adversely affect my ability to put food on the table and keep the roof over my head. So, please forgive me for not laughing at your "joke". I'm not holding these statements against you, and I'm not holding your attempt to call them a joke against you. But, you should stop and think about how they might affect you if they were made in a public forum about you, your company and its products.
Thanks for clarifying. It's not exactly a retraction all of the disparaging comments but it's a step in the right direction.
Yes, one of the things that I noticed at the Pinpoint web site is that there are no prices. There's not even a mention of prices. You know that feeling you get when you go to a restaurant that has no prices on the menu? If you have to ask then you can't afford it!
I could see that the Pinpoint products are designed for machinery alignment and calibration. And, I know that their solutions can be adapted to woodworking machines. But, they don't offer any ready made solutions which "achieve the same thing" that the Jr. does. It would seem that they focus on industrial solutions - mostly in the metalworking industry.
I understand optical metrology. Believe me, I get it. That's why I have so much trouble with what you are saying. If I didn't understand the topic then I might just accept your vague descriptions and topical diversions. You have said that your laser is a distance measurement device. Fine. Now, how do you fixture that device so that you can measure blade or fence alignment in relation to the miter gauge slot? How do you fixture the laser so that you can measure blade tilt or miter gauge angles? How do you fixture the laser so that you can measure jointer knife alignment. These are not trivial questions so they require something other than trivial answers. You can't just point to some laser alignment tools and accessories on a web site and declare that they work just great on woodworking machines.
The point is this: if your company created this solution for a customer, would it still cost less than a Jr.? If you don't count your time or any of the resources of your company in the cost, then it is "fiddling aroudn in the shop" and the comparison is not valid. If all I did was count the cost of materials, then I could claim that the Jr. cost me a lot less than your solution.
And, nobody in the group is coming forward to claim that they sent the alleged email. Hmmmm.....
In your original message you characterized me as "bold" profiteer trying to get group members to send me "$1K+". In your second message you accused me of "taking advantage of this forum to make a buck" and began to disparage my products by saying "I achieve the same thing at a much lower cost anyway." I didn't respond to this "aggresive language" with equally disparaging remarks, I just asked you to back up your claims. And, I think I did it in a very polite manner.
In your third message you issued the veiled threats where you listed my shop address and promised to pay me a visit. In response to questioning your solution, and suggesting that it was "bovine fecal matter" you accused me of being a "hostile" "liar" who responded with "insults". You characterized my product as requiring "...the use of goofy triangles and charts to determine an angle." and suffering from "physical deviations" with "bearings, rails, steel rods or a slab of aluminum that will deviate in changing conditions". I consider this to be pretty "aggressive language".
Now, while the term "bovine fecal matter" isn't exactly complimentary, it is not a disparaging statement about you personally, it's a comment about what you said, . It's the most polite way I can think of to say that I don't believe your statements. And I still feel that way for a number of reasons. First, you continue to evade the original questions with attempts to turn around the argument. Again, it's not about what your device can do that mine can't. It's about your claim to "...achieve the same thing at a much lower cost". Second, you have preferred to issue veiled threats rather than calmly discuss the original questions. Third, you have preferred to villify others (myself and Doug) than to calmly discuss the original questions.
Fourth, I have to keep reminding you that you haven't answered the original questions. There's always time for you to post a reply, and such replies have proven to be quite long and involved, but none have answered the original questions.
I don't care about your opinion of my annual promotional offers to this group. Obviously you haven't been watching this group very long because I do it every year. Go search Google Groups if you don't believe me. I do it out of gratitude for all the help that group members have given to me during the year. And, I really don't make any money doing it. I'm not going to get bent out of shape over your protests, I'll let the others do that. I want to discuss the technical aspects of your device vs. mine. Let's forget the threats and name calling and accusations and other evasions of the original questions and calmly discuss the solution that you claim can "...achieve the same thing at a much lower cost."
Thanks, Ed Bennett snipped-for-privacy@ts-aligner.com
Should just let this thread be - but
Got ANY slop between the piece of wood you slip in the miter slot and the sides of the miter slot? If you do it comes acrossed in your measuring. If you don't then the wood or even UMHW (or is it UHMW - ultra heigh molecular weight) may/will bind in the miter slot as you slide down it to take your second measurment.
Mr. Bennett's product (see how I got around using TS-Aligner?) has three bearings under the part that travels down the miter slot - two fixed and one moveable left/right to eliminate slop while avoiding binding. And they can be removed when not needed - like when checking/setting joiner/planer knives, checking infeed and outfeed tables for parallel with the joiner/planer cutter head, drill press and router run out, . . .
I've got a Robland X-31 - five function combi with a sliding table. More settings inter relationships than you can shake a stick at - and it's a euro machine so there's metric just to make things interesting. The TS-A makes the set up and maintenance a bit easier - and every lit bit helps.
charlie b
ps - Anyone remember Stuart Brandt's (Whole Earth Catalog) bulletin board The Well? Or the IMSAI? 8080, 8080A or 6502 ring any bells? On the first limited production run micro processor that actually worked, there are three letters on it. The last letter is an F. Anyone know what the F stands for? Hint, its the last name of the kid who did the mask drawings. What's his last name?
| ps - Anyone remember Stuart Brandt's (Whole Earth Catalog) | bulletin board The Well? Or the IMSAI? 8080, 8080A or 6502 | ring any bells?
Still have my IMSAI (but sold off my ASR-38 long ago; but still have my paper tape splicer).
:-)
-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA
Probably depends on your definition of "serious". Let's just say that both of us have been doing serious woodworking, and posting here, for a long time, and leave it at that.
The BB nope, The Well nope, however 8080 ect. yep I have the paralell scars to prove it to. The last question have no idea, I just fixed Gandalfs stuff.
Mark (sixoneeight) = 618
Yes.
Yes
Yes, but why did you leave out the 4004? I remember the ACM meeting wh= ere Adm. Grace Hopper showed a picture of the chip layout. The first compu= ter for under $1000, IIR what she said. Of course, you had to buy 10,000 o= r so=20 to get that price :-).
There my memory fails me. But do you remember a minicomputer named Sue= ?
--=20 It's turtles, all the way down
No, but I remember a boy named Sue...
Did you note the screw in the home-made device?
I think if you adjust the fence so the device doesn't quite bind nor develop any slop as you run it along the fence then you're golden.
This device at the ShopNotes site utilizes a traditional tablesaw alignment technique which involves subjectively judging the feel or sound of a scrape/rub of one surface (a screw head in this case) against another (the blade or fence). It definitely works (for some people). I have sold several Aligners to people who previously used this technique and later let me know that they had their saw properly aligned all along. For each one of these, at least 10 people let me know that the Aligner has revealed that their saw was significantly misaligned all along. Despite hours and hours of tedius "hear the scrape" or "feel the rub" their efforts were in vain. Some of us just aren't any good at making these sort of subjective judgements. Both groups are very happy with their purchase because the Aligner does a lot more than just blade and fence alignment.
If you just want blade and fence alignment, and you don't feel confident in your ability to make these subjectve judgements, then just get a low cost dial indicator ($15 max) and attach it to a stick. You can use it with your miter gauge. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:
Ed Bennett snipped-for-privacy@ts-aligner.com
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