Hi folks,
Just thought I'd share this in case it's useful to others. Seems to be a few pages out there on the internet suggesting you can't adjust the accuracy of Evolution Rage saws.
Had mine for a year now and it's never cut an angle right once and was a total pain in the arse to rotate as the friction was immense. All in all the build quality on the chasis of these saws is really poor. I put the fence on my surface plate and it's not flat at all, so much so that where they've ran a face mill over it to flatten it, it hasn't even cut about 30% of the surface area. Same applies to the bearing surface between the two halves of the base. The whole thing is just cheap and nasty, EXCEPT, the blade and the motor/gearbox which are great...
Tonight I decided to rip it apart and either make it useable, or chuck it.
As it happens in about an hour I remedied all the problems which were defects from the factory, I've listed them below in the hope they'll help others. I think these saws are great as they're the only option for convenient cutting of steel but they're terrible for accuracy and neat woodwork.
Fixed stops being out of angle
The fence can be unbolted and it's angle adjusted to bring the 'fixed stops' to where they ought to be, by carefully checking against a square. This will only help if done hand in hand with the next tweak. On mine the fixed stops were about 2 degrees out.
Fixed stops wobbly
When I engaged the saw in to a fixed stopping point it could be moved left and right by another degree, so you had no guarantees what angle you landed on. Turns out the green lever thing you use for this purpose was pivoting loosly on a bolt between two bits of aluminium casting, snugging the bolt up tightly took out the free play, but also, the green thing was an injection moulded plastic part and had a gigantic flashing line right where it was meant to be engaging with the metal casting. I filed this off to make it a good fit.
Little angle pointer widget not right
The little red perspex thing which points to your current mitre angle was about 3 degrees out at all times. You'd think you can adjust it but there was a snot on the aluminium casting which was preventing it from being rotated to the right spot. I ground the snot off with my dremel and this sorted the problem.
Rotation very unsmooth
Again there was a big snot of aluminium left over on the casting. I had to take the base apart from the upper part to find this. It was catching and dragging and making the saw a pain in the arse to rotate.
I also noticed that the top half of the base was nicely machined, but the bottom half looked terrible. I covered both parts in valve lapping paste, reassembled and spun the thing left and right over and over until the valve lapping paste smoothed everything out.
Sliding action sloppy
There are gib screws on the right hand linear bearing thing, they're a nut with a grub screw in the middle, loosen the nut then tighten the grubscrew to tighten up the sliding action.
After I did all of these the saw now rotates smoothly and freely, the positive stops engage tightly and without any option to be off a bit, and usefully the angle pointer is actually telling the truth.
Anyway, I wish I'd done this years ago, there's a trail of dodgy skirting boards and architrave all over the town because of this piece of crap! Ah well
Just thought I'd share this in case it's useful to others. Seems to be a few pages out there on the internet suggesting you can't adjust the accuracy of Evolution Rage saws.
Had mine for a year now and it's never cut an angle right once and was a total pain in the arse to rotate as the friction was immense. All in all the build quality on the chasis of these saws is really poor. I put the fence on my surface plate and it's not flat at all, so much so that where they've ran a face mill over it to flatten it, it hasn't even cut about 30% of the surface area. Same applies to the bearing surface between the two halves of the base. The whole thing is just cheap and nasty, EXCEPT, the blade and the motor/gearbox which are great...
Tonight I decided to rip it apart and either make it useable, or chuck it.
As it happens in about an hour I remedied all the problems which were defects from the factory, I've listed them below in the hope they'll help others. I think these saws are great as they're the only option for convenient cutting of steel but they're terrible for accuracy and neat woodwork.
Fixed stops being out of angle
The fence can be unbolted and it's angle adjusted to bring the 'fixed stops' to where they ought to be, by carefully checking against a square. This will only help if done hand in hand with the next tweak. On mine the fixed stops were about 2 degrees out.
Fixed stops wobbly
When I engaged the saw in to a fixed stopping point it could be moved left and right by another degree, so you had no guarantees what angle you landed on. Turns out the green lever thing you use for this purpose was pivoting loosly on a bolt between two bits of aluminium casting, snugging the bolt up tightly took out the free play, but also, the green thing was an injection moulded plastic part and had a gigantic flashing line right where it was meant to be engaging with the metal casting. I filed this off to make it a good fit.
Little angle pointer widget not right
The little red perspex thing which points to your current mitre angle was about 3 degrees out at all times. You'd think you can adjust it but there was a snot on the aluminium casting which was preventing it from being rotated to the right spot. I ground the snot off with my dremel and this sorted the problem.
Rotation very unsmooth
Again there was a big snot of aluminium left over on the casting. I had to take the base apart from the upper part to find this. It was catching and dragging and making the saw a pain in the arse to rotate.
I also noticed that the top half of the base was nicely machined, but the bottom half looked terrible. I covered both parts in valve lapping paste, reassembled and spun the thing left and right over and over until the valve lapping paste smoothed everything out.
Sliding action sloppy
There are gib screws on the right hand linear bearing thing, they're a nut with a grub screw in the middle, loosen the nut then tighten the grubscrew to tighten up the sliding action.
After I did all of these the saw now rotates smoothly and freely, the positive stops engage tightly and without any option to be off a bit, and usefully the angle pointer is actually telling the truth.
Anyway, I wish I'd done this years ago, there's a trail of dodgy skirting boards and architrave all over the town because of this piece of crap! Ah well
