Why Zero-Clearance? These types of inserts can reduce the amount of dust and eliminate small chips that get trapped by the blade and the the insert. Additionally, the line is exactly where the blade will fall (until someone uses the miter function ). There’s back-and-forth on tear-out being reduced. While it can help some, theres usually more here related to sharpness of the blade and the handling.
Delta Spindle Sander
New Wrenches on order to allow for easier spindle changes.
Note : do not tighten this so much that someone else may need extra muscle to untighten it. It does not need that much force. If you haven’t been trained on this properly, the Sanders class is available to show you how to use these machines.
Create a wiki page for the new Cricut Easy Press 2
Create a stand and wiki page for the button maker
Various regular maintenance tasks around the different spaces.
Clamps - Oops
We recently received a bunch of woodshop clamps. Heavy duty, a bit rusty, but very usable. I put them nearby the clamp rack and didn’t think much at the time exactly where. They stood up just fine in the first bin of the scrap cart. If you reasonably thought these were being handed out because they were in the scrap cart, I don’t blame you! Could you please bring them back. And if anyone can help us put together a better clamp organization setup, this would be highly useful. There’s at least some volunteer time or possibly more for someone willing to help
2 additional things for everyone to be made aware of:
Robert is leading a FREE bandsaw usage and maintenance class on friday evening and during the first hour of the holiday party Saturday morning. Sign up on neon for it!
Stewards and anyone else who wants to join are invited to join us in the woodshop from 2-4 Saturday as we will be working on maintenance, instruction and general cleanliness of the shop prior to upcoming craziness of Santa’s elves working on last minute Xmas gifts.
The wrench was shortened on purpose, so people do not overtighten the spindle. If the spindle is overtorqued, it is almost impossible to take out without damage to the female shaft part. Parts are not easy to get and it is not easy to repair. It happened once already and it took months to get it fixed. The spindles, if the threads are cleaned on both the male part and the female part, should only be hand tight. You would need the wrench to loosen the spindle since the morse tapered of the shaft design tightens the spindle. When the threads are not cleaned prior of each use, the dust makes the threads drag requiring a wrench to properly tighten and little by little starts developing wear on the taper (easily identified as the surface is no longer smooth) until comes a time where the spindle locks and becomes almost impossible to take out. The spindle sander ia a great asset for sanding inside curves but it is also the least understood due to the left threads in some of the components and the tapered shaft.
NO NO NO NO!There is a reason we did this! The spindle sander was basically destroyed twice by people over-torqueing the spindle while changing it. We intentionally cut the handle short so that it was impossible for anyone to do that again. That wrench should only be used if and only if necessary to remove a spindle that became too tight to remove by hand. Spindles should only be hand tightened when installing them.
Everyone who takes the Stationary Sanders class knows why the wrench is stubby like this. If anyone is complaining about the wrench, then we should double-check their certification because they probably are not authorized to use that sander.
Addendum: I posted before I read Jose’s response, which gets into the technical details much more; it was he and James who were the primary repair people for this.
If there’s any issues going forward, I will ultimately take responsibility for it. It doesn’t seem like shortening the handle had the end-all effect. Recently I was trying to remove the spindle for someone and I had to put some serious muscle into it to untighten it.
There’s also a wrench missing from this, not sure where went or how long it has been missing. I ordered another one to help with this. For anyone teaching the Sanders class, please emphasize to not monkey wrench tighten this. For anyone else reading this that has already taken the class, please please please do not tighten this so much that it takes muscle to release. The same as the router, or any other machines that you would need to tighten something on.
And if there are issues with people doing that going forward, we will take actions accordingly. The last few times I have tried to change this thing out. It has been a real pain with a shortened handle and one dedicated wrench.
I can see your point. As i stated before people dont understand the design of the bottom of the spindle and think is business as usual thinking is only screw threads and a lot of torque is needed when in reality if installed correctly, hand tight is all is needed as it does tighten during use but not to the extent that you need Hercules muscles to loosen it up. Most people dont understand abrasives either so instead of letting the abrasive do the work, they use unnecessary pressure and in this case overheats the spindle which compounds the loosening part. Third most people are not familiar with the proper operation and do not take breaks to let the stock cool off and the spindle, they just keep at it until they reach their goal. Why people take stuff away and dont put it back? I can’t explain that for you. You can put a cable to the wrenches so they don’t walk away and still those wrenches are going to dissappear. The same way that a Crescent wrench keeps appearing in the drawer of the router (i have been using it lately) it should not be needed as the wrenches are present for the installation and removal of the collet. The wrenches were designed that way to prevent overtightening of the collect as it has almost the same morse taper design to secure the collet in place so a lot of torque is not needed but sure enough the one time i had to remove a bit, i had a hard time loosening the collet. Again, people don’t understand the morse tapers and think that overtorquing is better. I do hope that everything works out OK and the word gets out on the proper use of the spindle sander as if it breaks, you’re going to find out that it is not easy to fix and it can get messy as there is oil in that machine that nobody checks for the proper level. Good luck and hope for the best!
Quick note on the torque front — you big burly guys chiming in on the wrench length are forgetting that not everyone has the same level of strength. I’ve struggled to use some of our machines for this reason and personally need that extra torque to compensate for not having as much muscle on my own. We need to keep that in mind when we make changes to ensure we don’t alienate groups of people in the shop.
In the months I’ve been teaching the Stationary Sanders class since the spindle sander was repaired, I’ve been able to remove spindles with only a slight bit of force on the shortened wrench. If it is now requiring significantly more force, then we are already heading down the path that Jose described above that will lead to the spindle failure. Making it easy to apply more force will only accelerate us towards the impending disaster. The solution is not to remove the safeguard we put into place quite intentionally; we need to look into what is causing the change in the spindles and fix it. Probably the hole/taper has gotten progressively dirtier and needs a thorough cleaning, then we need to check its threads and all the spindles for damage so we can repair or replace things while it is still easy to do so.
Yes, people can go get a heavier wrench from elsewhere anyway, but the goal of a user interface is to make correct actions easier and incorrect actions harder. The shortened wrench fits this goal.
I am aware of your point about upper body strength differences. I had to adjust how I was teaching how to tighten the router table collet for precisely that reason. (The method that works for me is: as tight as I can tighten the two wrenches with my fingers only. But that definitely does not work for many women and even some men, whose finger strength is much less. We need to figure out the right torque and get an appropriate torque wrench anyway!)
But the amount of strength that should be required on the spindle sander even with the stubby wrench is quite small. If it is taking more force now, then we need to fix the sander, not the wrench. Doing the latter will only accelerate the sander’s demise.
Speaking as someone who took the sanders class during the period when the spindle was broken, we did not even discuss many of these points. I think a quick refresher demo for those of us who have already taken the class would be of great use.
May I propose that Ethan or Jose show those of us that are around during the holiday party this Saturday morning or during the wood shop stewards session 2-4 on Saturday the proper (and improper) ways of doing a spindle change? We can only make things better if we are properly educated on what right and wrong look like.
And if you are unavailable this Saturday let’s work to find a future time to help educate the membership on this.
Yes, I realized after I wrote that that many people took the class before we made this change, and I don’t recall if we clearly announced it here later (and even then, we unfortunately can’t count on people reading and remembering things from here).
How to disseminate important updates about machine usage to people is a constant problem here; I don’t know the right answer. I end up with tons of signs (that get mostly ignored) and even checklists in intentionally inconvenient locations (that now gets mostly ignored).
I can’t do anything on Saturday. I’m debating coming to the bandsaw class, which will take my day from packed to insane as it is. (Nutcracker matinee and evening performances.) But maybe I can run leads and key stewards through what I know sometime next week. I would definitely get Jose’s input; I learned things I hadn’t realized from his post above too.
I will be around the shop after 3 today until 1030 pm when my CNC class ends. I also plan on being there tomorrow from 930-4. Even if you can get me properly educated, I can then also share with others while in the shop.
I will be in Robert’s bandsaw session tonight as well so if you make that let’s discuss then.
Manufacturers base their design of tools based in what is needed for the equipment to function safely and secondly being ergonomically feasable for most people to be able to use the equipment. The problem is not the tool is the person not knowing how tight is tight enough. You can see a perfect ecample on the CNC’S one of the wrenches looks like it was cutoff but that is the design. On the Bosch router you see a short wrench and a longer one basically the same design just different approach. If everybody would understand that a llittle past snug is tight enough, most people would be able to loosen the nuts but instead people tend to think that is a spinning shaft it has to be as tight as you can get it which is farther from the truth. The taper on the mentioned tools is there so very little torque is needed to hold the bits/end mills/shafts in place safely. Overtightening the nuts just leads to sudden wear and tear and does not increase the holding power of the design. I take the CNC spindle nut as an example. Under normal use that nut pretty much can last a lifetime but due to the cobstant overtightening right now is just barely holding the collet. On the router the nut has been replaced i don’t know how many times. Last time was last week by me. The one i threw away had the fins of the collet crushed onto the top of the nut due to overtightening. I have head a Porter Cable router for 15 years and have never had to replace the collet nut.
If you want a class from me, you have to meet my time since i drive an hour to Asmbly. Ill be there today at 6, saturday i finish at 9:30 am, and Sunday at noon. I will only give a class once. I do not have much time available to accomodate surprise classes.
). There’s back-and-forth on tear-out being reduced. While it can help some, theres usually more here related to sharpness of the blade and the handling.
