Bandsaw Shake

[Jim Ball]

BTW Harbor freight sells an American made (I think) Fenner competitor's mulitlink belts called AccuLink. I have one in the shop not in use yet -- but honestly except for the color Green vs Red it looks identical, no kidding. Much less expensive based on the reviews it is at least a comparable product.

http://www.harborfreight.com/vibration- ... 43771.html

It's $10 cheaper than the one I bought. There's a Harbor Freight in Joplin, Mo. near here, but I'd spend $10.00 or more in gas driving there. If I decide to replace any of my other V-belts, I might consider the HF version, but nothing else in my shop has a vibration problem right now. Good info to know, though.

[Brian D]

The above suggestions helped me to learn to get along with my Rigid, but I have to smack myself in the forehead every time I remember to clean the lower wheel of sawdust accumulation.

[Jim Ball]

I built a wooden cabinet for the bandsaw and just completed the reassembly this morning.

The result is almost complete elimination of shake and vibration in the bandsaw table, but still some vibration in the upper frame. I think this is inherent in the design & lack of strength in the cast iron upper frame. If anyone has suggestions on how to further reduce shake/vibration, I'm open to suggestions. I have a new set of Urethane tires to install, but that's a project for another day.

[ken cierp]

+ 1 for the Carter guides in my view a must. Jim I have to say I've never seen that type of vibration. Have you contacted Rigid -- sent that video? I sure would. Might be an out of balance upper wheel? I suspect you have already checked upper/lower wheel plane and the blade weld. I've purchased some fairly pricey blades that had welds that had the ends out of parallel causing a hop.

[Jim Ball]

+ 1 for the Carter guides in my view a must. Jim I have to say I've never seen that type of vibration. Have you contacted Rigid -- sent that video? I sure would. Might be an out of balance upper wheel? I suspect you have already checked upper/lower wheel plane and the blade weld. I've purchased some fairly pricey blades that had welds that had the ends out of parallel causing a hop.

I have not checked the blade. I'll try a couple of other blades and see if the results are different.

[Jim Ball]

I checked and found the upper & lower wheels to be coplanar. After removing the original rubber tires and cleaning the wheels in preparation for installing new urethane tires, I checked for balance and found both to be out of balance. An hour and a half later and both are as close to balance as I can get. The urethane tires are supposed to take 6 hours to seat to the wheels, so it will be another couple of hours before I can put the blade back on and see if there is further improvement.

Upper wheel: Each number indicates bottom center after a spin. The bias to one side is obvious


Lower wheel: Much easier to find the heavy side. The wheel would coast to a stop, then reverse direction until the heavy side was down.

[Jim Ball]

I replaced the original tires on the Ridgid bandsaw with Urethane tires. While the old tires were off the wheels, I checked for balance and found both upper and lower wheels to be out of balance. I spent quite a bit of time bringing the wheels back into balance, and have them balanced as well as I can get them. I also checked to make sure the upper & lower wheels were coplanar - no problem there. This made a small, incremental improvement but there is still vibration. At this point, I think I am limited by the inherent weakness in the strength of the Ridgid upper frame compounded by the addition of a 6" riser block.
Note: I ad-libbed the whole video and misspoke a time or two. ;) Obviously, early in the video, I meant to say that I replaced the steel frame stand with a wooden stand - not replaced the wooden stand!