While doing some minor tune up to my jointer, I found that the ends of the infeed and outfeed tables are not parallel with the cutterhead.
My jointer is the 8″ Grizzly G0586.
The infeed table, at least at the cutterhead end is about 3/16″ further away on the fence side. The outfeed table at the fence side is about 5/8″ away. I loosened the gib screws to determine if the table could be rotated to provide an even amount of clearance. It didn’t help.
It appears that the cutterhead end of the outfeed table was machined with a pretty straight edge except that the last 2″ is at an angle that accounts for the wide gap. I’m not sure this was intentional, not am I sure it has any impact.
Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks.
Replies
not quite understanding your situation. Are the tables twisted in relationship to the cutter head?
For a jointer to work properly lets use two boards to represent your infeed and outfeed tables. The boards, if lain on a workbench would be parallel to each other in three planes.
They would be parallel across their long edge (unimportant), along their long faces (72"± in your case) and parallel along their short faces (8" for your jointer).
If either of the last two were out as much as you stated then your jointer would be giving you fits and the jointer would look visibly out of whack from a ways off.
This is why I'm not quite sure exactly what you're question is.
The tables if raised to the same height should be co-planer along both their length and their width. A machinist straight edge is ideal, but a 6' level would show the sort of deviation you're talking about.
A picture would help a lot.
4/4I'll try to clarify.If you were to look at a plan view of the jointer, the faces will be running along the x-axis and the cutterhead centerline is 8" long, along the y-axis. The ends of each table next to the cutterhead has a gap of, say 2" to the cutterhead centerline. The issue is that the gap on the fence side is wider than the gap on the outboard side.The edges of the table appear to be in the same plane, so i'm assuming the ends were milled to something other than 90 degrees.There is no way to rotate the tables enough to achieve parallel ends and still keep the faces parallel.Thank you for your response, and if you any other thoughts, let me know.
If I understand your description, you're saying that the infeed table and outfeed tables are not linear when viewed from above, but form a slight angle relative to each other, like a shallow "V", i.e., nonlinear in the Z axis (where the X axis runs left to right, the Y axis runs floor to ceiling and the Z axis runs parallel to the floor, but towards and away from you)?
I'd say don't worry about it since linearity in that dimension is unimportant to the proper functioning of the tool, and trying to mess with it may muck up the X-Y parallelism of the tables, and that IS important.
Mike HennessyPittsburgh, PA
If your jointer is pretty new and it bugs you, why not call Grizzly? Mismachined parts are not uncommon on WW tools these days. It's part of the deal that you might get a lemon. Grizzly has a great reputation for taking care of these issues. They might send you a new table if you explain your case to them. At the very least, they can tell you what are acceptable tolerances in order to get good performance.
The description of his problem doesn't affect the performance in the slightest. You cannot just simply replace a table on a dovetailed macnine. You would have to regrind the unit as a whole to maintain the precision of the tables.
I still think I'd talk to Grizzly about it, Rick. If an uneven gap is normal and acceptable, so be it. If it isn't, at least you'll have the problem documented within the warranty period, so they can figure out some kind of fix.David B
Wasn't saying he shouldn't talk to them about it. My main point was, it won't affect the performance of the tool having non-parallel table edges and my "big" point was you can't just swap a table. It's a little known fact on the dovetailed jointers manufacturing process.
Thanks for the insight Rick. I hadn't really thought of that. I suppose they'd have to replace the entire table/bed unit?David B
Yes, the entire unit would be replaced. Having non-parallel edges won't hurt anything as I said before. If it's a big problem, mainly looking at non-parallel edge then one could trim them off. Also a little known fact is the infeed table edge isn't a chipbreaker on a jointer. The curved tops of the gibs are the chip breakers.
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