Calling owners of MiniMax 16's

S

Steve Clardy

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I installed a 1/4" blade on the impressive bandsaw yesterday.
I needed 1/4", so I could cut out some knee knockers for a kitchen island.

The upper/rear roller is adjusted as far forward as it will go, lacking 3/8" of making contact with the rear of the blade.

Lower guide is fine.

Seems the front blade guard is in the way.

I'm thinking of taking a cutoff saw and notching the blade guard. :huh:

Or am I missing something here :huh:

I needed to get these done, so I went ahead and eased into them [ 1 1/2" Oak blanks] and didn't have any problems.
 
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Steve, there’s something screwy with your setup. As you can see, the guard should be well above the guides. Are you sure that it is assembled correctly?
 

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Bruce. It looks like its assembled right.

It came assembled. No manual to reference to.

Mine has 4 sections to the guard. 4 sections that collaspe into each other as the cutting heighth is raised up.
Its all the way down now.
The lower section is bolted to the shaft that raises/lowers the cut heighth.


Yours is different. Plastic lower section?

:huh: :huh: :huh:
 
I think mine’s an earlier generation. You can see in this blurry pic how the tab from the 4-section guard attaches to the guide post, well above the guides. The plastic part is completely independent of the telescoping part. I don’t know what else to tell you but I think you should hold off on modifying it. Something’s not right on your machine.
 

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Ok. Yours bolts on the same as mine.
But I have a fifth section, which is steel, that is interfering with the roller.
Apparently your lower section, plastic, is cut out for the roller?

:huh: :huh: :huh: :dunno:
 
Steve, I just went out to check mine and it is the same as yours. We have the same vintage as we received them just a few days/couple weeks apart IIRC.

I haven't tried to put on a smaller blade yet but I had noticed that there would be a clearance issue when I did.

Maybe Sam can chime in to tell us a fix. Can you call them and talk to him?

It doesn't look like it would hurt anything to notch the guard, to me anyway.
 
I would get MM involved before making any mods....something is either wrong, or something needs to be done differently. Better to start from the way it was received...rather than where you are after modifying it.

My thoughts.
 
I haven't had a blade that narrow on mine yet, but I do recall seeing something about needing to make a small modification for narrow blades. IIRC it was either on Minimax site (at least before their big site revamp) or threads on the MM Users forum. If I can find it I'll post a link.
 
i don`t worry about it:eek: .......figure it`s a saw and i want it to cut........if a blade eats up the tire i`ll replace the tire.....i track my 16 in the center of the wheels and it lives with a 1/4" blade on it for scrolling......aside from accumulated gunk on the tires (from not hooking it up to the d/c) the tires are doing just fine after 35-40 blades.....tod
 
So the set is small enough on them 1/4" blades to not worry about them eating up the bearings?

Kind of like this..........

quarter_inch_blade.jpg

Seems like something they would cover in the manual.... :dunno:

Calling Sam Blasco!! :D
 
no!......don`t put the blade in the center of the guide bearings!.....move it over on the tires so it`ll track farther back in relation to the guide post then the guides are adjusted so the leading edge is behind the gullet.......by moving the blade farther back on the TIRE it`ll allow the thrust bearing to come forward enough to engage the back of the blade.......make sense?
 
my 16 is on a job but i`ll shoot pics of the 28 guides to help `splain....
MVC-312S.JPG

MVC-313S.JPG

MVC-314S.JPG

MVC-315S.JPG

MVC-316S.JPG

the thrust bearing is adjustable independantly of the guides and the whole assembly is adjustable on the main shaft.......so in steves case the thrust bearing isn`t coming forward enough `cause it`s hitting the guard.....by moving the blade back on the tire it`ll let the thrust bearing have enough travel to engage the back of the blade before the guard interferes....

[edit].......or just lop off the offending part of the guard.....;)
 
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...
Seems like something they would cover in the manual.... :dunno:
...

I love my MM16 but their manuals SUCK. It's absolutely amazing the number of issues and fixes that they've known about for years and still fail to cover in their documentation. You'd think there's nobody there that knows how to add a few lines to a Word or PDF file.
 
I totally agree with you. Love my MM24, but the manuals are out of date and are missing a lot of key information. Oh well. If that is the worst I have to complain about, I am not doing too bad.

I have often wondered about updating manuals. Is there a legal liability without having them reviewed by a lawyer or something to cause the lack of updates?
 
...Calling Sam Blasco!! :D

Oops! I didn't see this until today. Yep we are talking about two different generations of blade guard -- the plastic guard days (boo) vs. the newer style with integrated metal guard (yeh). However in the factories first batch it was revealed the guard needed to be notched a bit more if you wanted to run your smaller blades toward the front of the tire (about 1/2" will do it and a dremel with cutoff wheel makes quick work of it. However, I like to run smaller blades back on the tire, more toward the middle, and that will work too. I like to back out of some cuts and if the smaller blade was close to front you run the risk of pulling it off the wheel. I know, I know -- never back out of a cut. Yeh, right. Anyway, to simplify my life I only use 2 different sized blades on my bandsaw (1" TriMaster for most dimensioning and straight work, and 1/4" for all else) 95% of the time, but that reasoning is for another time. What I do for the 1/4" blade is install a homemade block from phenolic scrap that I cut a kerf in. It lasts about a year and then I make another. Use the existing guides as a vise and clamp the block in place, letting the small blade ride in that kerf till its heart's content. This may create a bit of disagreement, but you really don't need any side guides, blocks, roller or discs with smaller blades. You want the blade to be able to twist. I don't even bother with putting a block on the bottom guides unless I'm cutting circles with my circle jig. Then the blade can really dance. :) Here's those blocks:

01SmallBladeGuideBlock.jpg


02SmallBladeGuideBlock.jpg
 
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