After struggling to get my old bandsaw to behave, my wife took pity on me and bought me a new one. After quite a bit of internet research we settled on a model 14" model supplied by a local machinery importer. The model itself is supposedly a German design but manufactured under licence un China. All in all it is reasonably well made but I quickly came across a large problem.
After cutting my first lamination and it not going so well I found that the rear guide was out of adjustment. No matter what I tried I couldn't get it into the right place. To be fair the supplier was helpful and even tried sending replacement parts. In the end it went back for them to try and fix. The issue was there was insufficent adjustment in the lateral adjustment of the guide head. The adjustment is achieved by rotating and eccentric shaft. I suggested to them the easiest fix would be to make a new shaft.
So a week went by and they rang me to say it was all fixed. I went along to pick it up and they feed me this bullshit story about how they adjusted this and that and it looked ok.
Got it home and went through the setup process again and found that all they had done was push the blade across with the guide, and worse they hadn't done up any of the locking nuts for the various adjustments they had messed with. Pretty pissed with them to be honest as not only had they not fixed it, they had messed up the rest of the setup.
So I set about setting it all up properly and after fixing everything else it still didnt line up properly. So I set off to see one of my old customers that has an extensive machine shop and he made me a new eccentric shaft which almost solved the problem. The second issue with the adjustment was the hole the shaft went into on the guide support post was pretty sloppy. Sorted that out and now the guide is in the right place.
Still took a lot of effort to try and get it cuttig straight and square. I think I am basically there but the blade that came with the machine is crap so I am waiting for a new blade.
