I recently got a SawStop PCS and I am having a problem. My fence is aligned correctly and I am following all of the standard safety procedures. I have feather boards and use a push stick. The beginning of the rip cut is perfect.
The problem occurs when the material starts to pass the riving knife or splitter. The material starts to drift away from the fence causing a concave cut on the edge of the work piece. Has anyone encountered this and if so how do I fix it? Thank you all in advance for your assistance.
The source is either misalignment of your saw or tension in
your wood stock. Your blade may be heeling. Your riving
knife may be off. The face of your fence may be curved.
Your reference edge may be bowed. Your fence may be
deflecting. Your assessment of fence parallelism may be
inaccurate.
Very good possibility the riving knife is misaligned, pulling the stock away from the fence … one possibility (that I don't necessarily recommend) would be to make a few test cuts with the riving knife removed.
Another (less likely) possibility would be a warped/bent fence.
I have a PCS too. I had the same issue too when I started out.
I'm going to venture a guess that you have too much pressure on the feather board and that always causes the workpiece to want to drift away from the fence.
It could be anything Loren mentioned. But a couple of test cute without the riving knife could quickly determine whether or not the the problem is there. That's the first thing I would try.
Sounds like the riving knife to me too.Check with a series of cuts aligning the riving knife laterally each way.If it gets worse move it back more, til it cuts perfect.Alistair
Where do you position the push stick? Loren's suggestions can all cause this problem, but it's also possible that you're "steering" workpiece away from the fence because of where you're positioning the push stick. Ideally, the push force should be directly in line with the blade. When it isn't, you can introduce a bit of lateral force which wants to "steer" the workpiece. The further your force is "off-line" the more pronounced the lateral force.
You have to approach this systematically. Test each theory until you find the culprit.
First raise your blade and move your fence to it so its just a paper's thickness away from the sides of the teeth and lock down the fence. Is the gap the same all around? Is the riving knife touching the fence (it shouldn't be). Repeat this on the other side of the blade.
If that's not an issue, put a straight edge against the fence and look for gaps. If you see gaps, slide the straight edge back and forth and see if the gap moves w/ the straight edge (ie curved straight edge) or with the fence (ie curved fence).
Still not it? Then take a wide board (make sure its straight by sliding it against the fence as in the prev step) and without the riving knife, without the featherboard, try nibbling off one edge with a push block like this: http://www.woodsmithshop.com/download/313/313-pushblock.pdf
I try to position my push block closer to the blade than to the fence. That helps to counteract the resistance that the blade makes which will try to make the workpiece drift away from the fence.
Is it curved? If not, then try adding in the riving knife and repeat the last step.
Ok so I made some adjustments to the splitter and it looks like that solved the problem. It also helped remove burm marks. The splitter wander parallel to the blade causing the material to push itself away from the fence as soon as it hit the end of the splitter which was actually outside of the blade kerf. Thank you all for the suggestions.
I have heard about this sort of thing quite a bit. People always check the leading edge of their splitter/riving knife but ther rear edge can be angled away or towards the fence and cause issues. Glad you found it and hopefully others can benefit from your search. I learn a bunch from hearing how others solve problems.
Dan, Did you ever figure out what the issue was? I have a similar problem, but found out after days of checking, measuring, etc, that the laminated wood on the fence was coming unglued and causing a warp.
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