Oscillating Spindle Sander – Tilt Table?
Bill1608
| Posted in Power Tools and Machinery on
I am going to make an oscillating spindle sander. The design is simpler if the table doesn’t tilt. For general woodworking, is the tilting feature needed very often? If the answer is rarely, I won’t bother. For the occasions when you need the tilt, could you normally get by with using a tilted board on top of the table to act as a tilted table?
Replies
Bill
It depends on what result you are after. If you sand to a curved line with the table tilted the result will be a section of a cone. If you sand to a curved line with the workpeice on a wedge (tilted board) then the result will be a tilted section of a cylinder. Ther is also the variable thrown in with the tilted table of needing to pay attention to where your contact patch is on the spindle. If the table is tilted to say 80° then depending on where you contact the spindle you can get anywhere from 80° to 90°. With the table square and the workpeice fastened on a 10° wedge the result will be 80° regardless of which side of the spindle is contacted.
There will be a test in the morning ;o)
Rich
The Professional Termite
I know what the effects of a tilted table are, I was asking how often you need to do that for general woodworking. Just thinking about it, I can't come up with much need for it to tilt, but maybe people have seen a need that I haven't. Thanks!
If you can't think of much need for the type of work you do then just build it fixed and use a wedge for those special occasions. As a pattern maker I used the tilt spindle feature a lot (more than square) but I also made a wooden sine plate to use with many different machines for the times I wanted to tilt the workpeice instead. It can quickly be set to any angle so I only have one to store rather than many wedges of different angles lying around. It is also quicker to set than it is to build a wedge. You can also use the wedge the same as a tilted table by not fastening the workpeice to it, just not as handy.
Just food for thought.
RichThe Professional Termite
Bill,
I use the tilting table on my Rigid whenever I need to sand a beveled edge. That would be occaisonally. For the sake of simplicity, you could build a fixed table, and just hand sand that rare bevelled edge.
and www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com)
- Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
If you are doing pattern work (making wooden patterns for castings) the tilt table is used often as most patterns have a draft angle of 3 degrees or so. I make several patterns a year so the tilt feature is useful. Now my spindle sander does not tilt so I have several tables with common draft angles. This works well but is somewhat inconvenient.
I have a tilt table on my Ridgid OSS and - although it's rarely used tilted - is well worth having when it's needed. It would probably take me far longer to make some kind of angled jig than it does to just tilt the table and get 'er done.
All I can say is I use the 'tilt' often on my Big Box one... I'd be lost without that feature...
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled