PM2000 - As assembled review

[SteveColes]

Note: I just copied this first post to a new thread so I could keep the "You Suck" messages seperate from this attempt as an informal review.

Courtesy of toolferone, the PM 2000 was delivered today.:eusa_danc I'm going to use this thread to document the complete assembly and setup process thru to the first cuts. There will be plenty of pictures in a dedicated Album So with no further ado, here is the base saw

And here is the rest of it

:eusa_danc :eusa_danc :eusa_danc :eusa_danc :eusa_danc :eusa_danc :eusa_danc :eusa_danc :eusa_danc :eusa_danc :eusa_danc :yes4lo: :yes4lo: :yes4lo: :yes4lo: :yes4lo: :yes4lo: :yes4lo: :yes4lo: :yes4lo:

 

[SteveColes]

Disclaimer

First the disclaimer. This is my first real cabinet saw. I really have nothing to compare it to. I've helped assemble a few for friends over the years and learned a few assembly techniques. I've cut wood on a few, most notably my neighbor's Unisaw over eight years ago. The progressions of tablesaws I have owned and used is:

Ryobi bench top saw
Ryobi 3100 saw
Dewalt 746X ( the I just sold)

Pet peeves:

I never met a Miter Gauge that I liked. They all flex. and the longer the fence or piece of wood being cut, the more the flex is. I just ordered an Osborne EB3 just to see if they fix that problem as advertised. More on that later.

I never met a rip fence that didn't move on the outfeed end when doing a long rip and didn't have positioning accuracy andrepeatbility as an issue. That's why I put the Incra TSLS system on the dewalt 746x, which did eliminate most of those issues.

Instructions manuals: Most are lousy and don't seem to match the actual equipment. I'll have more to say on the PM2000 manual as I do the installation.

 

[Travis Porter]

Re: Disclaimer

I have the Osborne EB3. It is a nice gauge overall. The gauge I got with my PM66 was sweet as well.

 

[Ray Martin]

Steve,

One thing we're all going to want to hear about... How many parts are left over :lol:

Ray

 

[SteveColes]

First Impressions

The first impression that i have is one of quality. That doesn't really mean much at this point, but it is certainly the impression that I got.

The base of the cabinet is cast iron

You all have seen the stamped out cheap wrenches that are usually supplied as the arbor wrench, well not here, a regular forged combination of 27mm

While I have never seen this before, I might have not just noticed it on other saws in this price range. On the tilt gauge are two movable indicators, Which I assume are meant to provide repeatability for repitative angle cut. Later I'll test them to see if they are really useful.

The last item I noticed was the sheet metal that made up the body of the cabinet. It seemed much more sturdy and thicker that I had seen on other equipment. Well, I can't speak objectively on the sturdiness of the cabinet, yet:lol: But on the perceived thickness of the I can. It mic'd out at .100 in which seemed pretty good. But as a comparison, I checked my Delta 14" Bandsaw. The sheetmetal on its base was .125 in or a full 1/8in. All this proves is that my impression wae wrong:slap:

 

[NZAPP1]

Thanks Steve for sharing. I will be following this closely. I will be looking to buy a new saw in the near future. :eusa_danc

 

[SteveColes]

Lots of pictures in the PM2000 Album. More narrative to follow.And then more picture

 

[toolferone]

What is with the bad news on the last picture you posted in your album?

 

[SteveColes]

What is with the bad news on the last picture you posted in your album?

You'll just to wait like everyone else until I catch up with writing:slap:

Actually, I'm not sure yet.:lol:

 

[SteveColes]

Attaching wings to saw

The saw comes with 2 cast iron extension wings. While I have may own way of aligning and leveling saw wings, I decided to follow their instructions and see how that worked out.

The first step is of course to attach the wings. The instructions say to have your assistant hold the wing in place, while you hand tighten the three bolts that hold the wing in place.

OK, now to find an assistant. My male Golden retriever informed me that he rather chew on his nylabone and then made himself scarce. My shop cat informed me that even standing on his tippy toes, he couldn't reach the wing from the floor. The LOML (human that is) just gave me a dirty look.:lol:

The instruction manual covered this eventuality and suggested a method that while obvious, I wouldn't have thought of it. +1 point for the manual. You hold the wing vertically and line up the middle hole and insert the mounting screw.

If you look at the picture, you'll realize that had I mounted the wing with the top surface facing me, I wouldn't have been able to swivel the the wing into proper position, because that adjustment wheel would have gotten in the way. There was no mention of that in the manual. -1 point.

Now, I swiveled the wing into proper position and "hand tightened" all three mounting bolts as instructed. Well, unless, everyone else in the world has twice the finger strength than I do, that amount of tightening is not enough for the procedure that follows, which requires hammering the wing in alignment. So I tightened all three bolts just to point where the wing would stay in place and it took a hammer blow to move it.

Now for alignment. I was pretty sure that the method they described would be a pita and I would be at it for a while. The method was the standard. A wooden block and a hammer and taping one side until flush and the same with the other side. The problem that occurs is that you get a see-saw effect. Tap one side flush and the other side pops up. I tried this method for 20 minutes, trying various degrees of tightening and combination of the bolts when a side was flush. No joy:BangHead:

So now I did what I knew would work. I removed the middle bolt that was acting the pivot. Raised both ends of the extension until they were slight higher than the edge. Tightened the two bolts until the edges met fairly tightly. Took my steel straight edge and laid it flat, the long way down the seam. Now using a rubber mallet, I tapped fairly hard on the straight edge down its length. Sort of like I was seating a brick in bed of mortar.

Uncovered the seam and it was flush all the way. put the straightedge on it and everything was perfect. No sag at the end:eusa_danc I was worried about that because I had no shim material on hand. Now I put the the middle bolt back in and carefully tightened all three bolts in a 123 manner just tightening each bolt a little at a time, so the torque of tightening was less likely to cause movement. All done, 2 minutes:eusa_clap

Now the other side. 10 more minutes.

NOTE TO POWERMATIC: The tapped mounting holes in the table top should have a slight entry bevel. It was a ***** trying to find the holes and get the bolts started without it:eusa_naug

 

[SteveColes]

Steve,

One thing we're all going to want to hear about... How many parts are left over :lol:

Ray

Quite a few:lol:

 

[SteveColes]

First Look at the inside and its features

Well not really, I had already peeked:lol: But at this point the manual says to install the Blade. So at this point, I first need to remove the throat plate

This is the longest throat plate I have ever seen. However, it is easy to remove, just stick a finger into the hole and pop it out. The plate is held in place by captured spring loaded ball bearings. There are 5 set screws on the plate that are obviously intended to level and flush the plate. God job.

But, the plate is not cut through at the end. This means that to remove the plate while the riving knife is in place means poping the plate loose and then lifting it over the top of the knife. Not great, but doesn't sound too bad, YET.

Now we get the first look at the riving knife and its Quick Release lever.

Here we can see the more of the insides.

The holddown looks to be very solid and the quick release lever is easy to use. But the position of the lever becomes a problem.

That position of the lever is in the manual in several places. However, if you lower the saw bladde. The end of the lever hits the back and stops the and further lowering of the blade. A little experimentation shows that the best positioning is with the end of the lever pointing to that yellow thing.

The yellow thing is actually a partial shourd around the blade. At the bottom of the shroud is a 3" dia. flex hose which runs to the back of the case.There it connects to through connnect, which on the outside of the case become a 4" Dust Collector fitting.

This concept of shrouding the blade for dust collection is supposed to be something that works very well. My Dewalt 746 used this type of DC and it worked very well

 

[McRabbet]

Re: PM2000 - Gloatus Maximus

I haven't noticed any comments about the built-in casters that this unit has -- how do they work? Just curious, because I don't see any lever or handle to actuate them, or am I totally mis-informed...

Rob

 

[SteveColes]

Re: PM2000 - Gloatus Maximus

I haven't noticed any comments about the built-in casters that this unit has -- how do they work? Just curious, because I don't see any lever or handle to actuate them, or am I totally mis-informed...

Rob

Haven't got to that part of the review, yet. But yes they work. You use the same wheel that adjusts the blade angle.

 

[SteveColes]

Spindle Nut And Lock

As I mentioned, it is at this point that manual that it says to install the blade. So now I'll look at more of the insides.

Above you can see the spindle, its washer, and its massive 27 mm spindle bolt. The large size makes it much easier to manipulate and hold onto. This becomes very important because of the dust collection blade shroud. If you drop the nut as I did with my DeWalt 746, many times, the nut drops into the shroud and then slides down into the 3" hose and towards the Dust Collection outlet in the back of the saw. BUT, it never quite makes it there, so retrieving the nut can become quite a hassle:BangHead: With this size nut, the likelihood of dropping it, is quite a bit lessened.:eusa_clap

Now you can get a better look at the spindle lock, a very nice feature, and it works:eusa_danc It is not ideal, but it works better than most spindle locks I've used on other types of machines.

Here you see how it is engaged.

Now I'll finally install the blade. My current favorite general purpose blade, especially when working with plywood.

Now the relative ease of installing and tightening down the blade can be seen

So overall, this whole process was very easy. I still didn't see why I should install the blade at this point. I do now and it would have been nice if the manual had mentioned it:frown3qg:

 

[SteveColes]

Unpacking the rails

Time to mount the rails:eusa_danc So of course, I have to unpack them first.:rolleyes5cz: Up to this point, I was very happy with the packaging and the way they were shipped. So here are the rails with the box opened up.

So far, so good! But where were the bolts, etc.? As I lifted up one end of the fence tube, some fell out the other end and rolled around the floor, as if the they were loose inside the tube.

Being loose, didn't make sense, so I put my finger inside and pulled out the rest

From here, you can see what had happened. They packaged all the nuts and bolts in a thin plastic bag and shoved them inside the tube where the bag ripped on the sharp and ragged inside lip.

Also, note the little piece of folded up paper in the remnants of the bag. That turned out to be a manual errata sheet, but could have easily gotten lost or ignored. Those types of paper are usually just a "packed by" or something else totally useless. But, because I was taking extra care because of this review, I unfolded and read it. It turned out to be a change about which length of bolt went where. I, of course, promptly forgot about it and was very puzzled, later, why some bolts didn't seem to screw down all the way:slap:

Now, why am I making a deal about this packaging? Well, it wasn't because of this, a victim of the same sharp edges that ripped the parts bag:

It was because how easy it would have been to loose some of those parts, when they fell out. I spent a good 20 minutes searching the floor to find them all. Some of course, had rolled to some places pretty far away. As it turned out, there were 2 parts that I never found, but luckily they were part of the parts used for mounting on a different saw.:biggrin9gp:

 

[SteveColes]

Attaching Rails

This part went fairly well, mostly because I had a set of these:

Putting in the required bolts and nuts, and "finger tightening" them can only be done by people with very long and very thin fingers and when they said "finger tightening", they must have meant by superman.

The instructions kept talking about the assistant that would hold one end of things while you did the bolting and adjusting. Well, because the LOML would have helped, if I asked, she would also have complained about the cigarette smoke and smell the whole time, I opted for some other assistants

The front rail front lip had to be adjusted to a very specific distance below the table top. The manual suggested using a combination square set at the required distance. So I put in the two end bolts that went through the table. I tightened down the left bolt so the rail was as the correct distance. Then using the reversed clamp in the above picture, raised and lowered the right end until its distance was correct. Tightened the right bolt and used the the combo square to double check the correct distance. Then, I added the remaining two bolts and tightened everything again. I, then, checked the distance again with the combo square. Right On:eusa_danc :icon_thum

OK, time to for a smoke and a cup of coffee. So I rolled my other assistant (Chair) over took a seat and admired my handiwork:eusa_clap As I was looking at the edges of the rail compared to the edges of the table, it appeared that the rail was lower on the right then on the left.:shocked7fl: So I got out the combo square, again, and everything was right on.:frown3qg: Must be an optical illusion. But, just in case, I put the straight edge on the table.

The right wing was drooping by .015 on the right and raised on left by .010 :shocked7fl: :BangHead: :saw:

 

[Gofor]

It looks like you will be very happy with the saw. The picture of finger says that you will have a good end product. From my experience, a project just isn't completely done 'til I draw a little blood. Its gotten so bad that when I finish something, the LOML asks "Did you bleed on it?", at which point when I say yes, she feels like its done right!!.
So rest assured, you're doin' it right!!

(Forgive me, I'm just jealous 'cause You Suck!!)

:lol::lol::lol:Go