Hello,
I hope someone can help me out here, unfortunately SCM is no help.

I purchased last November the Bandsaw from SCM, a Formula S640p.

I mounted a power feeder to the saw and I am cutting veneer until I realized that the guides getting stuck. The bandsaw was even cutting into the upper guide behind the blade and left a deep groove into the metal. And due to the friction the whole guide holder gets very hot and also sparks are coming off the guides ( mostly from the guide behind the blade)

I disassembled the guides and come to realize that they are hard to turn. Two of the guides even fell apart when I took them off the saw.
I talked to scm and they send me a new guide assembly. But that hasent happened yet.

After I cleaned everything and the guides are running freely I cut some more wood and the same happened after 5 cuts again. Guides getting stuck and creating lot of heat and the upper guide behind the sawblade is running but get stuck time to time and create sparks.
A dust collector is hooked up.

Does anybody has the same experience?

Does anybody has a Tipp how to keep the guides from getting stuck?

Thank you,

Mathias

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View higher quality, full size image (2268 X 4032)

I have that all the time. Most people switch to a ceramic guide system. I'm switching to grease as a lube next time, light oil does not last. As a side note, be very careful with you current wheel guides. I dropped one and the shaft basically snapped off the wheel. They are heat treated to an extreme hardness and are as brittle as glass. I super carefully glued it back on with Devcon epoxy and it has been running for a couple months since then. Kinda like a miracle repair.

Hey Rich,
Thank you for the response.
I tried oiling it too. Had the same experience as you. Lasted only a short time.

Thanks for that advise, luckily I have not dropped it.

I am just surprised that the guides are such a bad design. I cant clean them or take them apart, only if they fall apart by them self and that's not a good sign either.

I am afraid if I grease the guides that the saw dust gets in there and then they wouldn't work at all.

Do you know a ceramic guide what would fit onto this saw?
As far as I know SCM don't have ceramic guides for there saws or am I misinformed?

Thank you,

Mathias

You might see if these will work. https://www.shop.lagunatools.com/Laguna-Guide-Set-to-Retro-Fit-Euro-Guides

Hi M. My experience is with a UK spec Aggazani NRA 600 (24in) which runs similar if not identical Euro pattern guides.
I'm wondering if there might not be a problem in your set up? The blade on the Agazzani for example contacts the rear thrust guide only if a lot of feed pressure is used - so much so that the guides are clearly not the primary factor controlling blade tracking. They function as more of a safety net which comes into play in more extreme circumstances.
I bought the saw lightly used almost 10 years ago. It had a really blunt blade on and destroyed guides much like yours.
I set it up carefully and fitted new guides then. There's still not a mark on them - despite it in recent months having just completed a project which entailed lots of resawing of up to 300m wide + beech boards.
Once a guide gets a nick in the surface or the bearing gets tight it's not going to rotate and will likely to go downhill rapidly. So there's a point beyond which problems will quickly follow.
Some thoughts:
The guide bearings need cleaning and light lubrication and should rotate freely. (dust can cause the bearing to bind).
The guides as you probably know should not be touching the blade or heating will result. I've found that all is fine with an eye balled perhaps 0.3mm+ clearance.
Guide post alignment can be an issue in that raising and lowering it can take the guides out of alignment relative to the blade.
The guide post on my saw was misaligned and required making an alignment jig and a lot of difficult to access fiddly work to get it moving parallel to the blade in both axes - the adjustment arrangement is pretty primitive.
Might the power feeder be forcing faster than the blade wants to cut so that it's pushed back hard against the guide? This would especially easily be the case if the blade is unsuited to the work. e.g. has too fine a tooth?
I've been resawing with a 1in wide version of the Woodmaster CT which has a relatively thick and stiff band and requires heavy tensioning - this probably helps.
The CT has a hooked tooth which may help too by pulling the wood into the cut and minimising the required feed pressure.
Feed pressure ramps quickly once a blade starts to lose sharpness - carbide holds up better. I've not used a power feeder, but might it be necessary to reduce the feed rate as the blade goes off?
Is the saw well set up in terms of wheel alignment?
Agazzani recommend tracking so that the teeth of the blade hang a tiny bit over the infeed side edge of the top wheel. (the wheels at that are set coplanar with just the tiniest touch on the top tilt adjustment moving the blade forward a few mm on the top wheel)
I'm not sure, but this presumably means that to touch the guide the blade has to climb back against the camber (if the wheel has any) and against tracking forces.
Good dust collection that keeps the cut clear may help to keep things cool too - it's surprising how much dust is produced when resawing.
I fitted a zero clearance ply throat plate, initially undrilled. This really messed up the dust clearance. Six or eight 8 or 10mm holes in the plate close in to each side of the blade made a remarkable difference....

Thank you Rich, I took a look at the guides, They look like they would fit. That might be the next step to go. If i am not getting everything set up correctly.

Ian, Thank you for your detailed response.
In the beginning I tried my best to set up the machine as good as I knew how.
But you are right with the set up. It looked like I was to close with the rear guide to the saw blade. I am running the power feeder on the slowest speed. The blade I am currently using is the 1" (25mm) Lennox Woodmaster CT 1.3 TPI.
I had the rear guide about 1.5 mm behind the blade. But other people suggested to set the guide 3 mm behind the blade. I run it with this set up and the blade still touches the guide while cutting.
The Blade tension is set to the Blade tension guide on the machine for the 25 mm blade.
I would need to take a look again at the guide post. What I realized was that every time I loosen and tighten the blade it is sitting in a different position relative to the rear guide. Each night when I leave the shop I release the blade from the tension.
Also when I change the Hight of the guide post I need to adjust the guides again because the side guides are touching then on one site the blade.

The side guides are set about the same distance you mentioned. +-.3mm.

The saw has a good amount of vibration while running. I am not able to figure out completely where it is coming from. It had a lot of vibration in the beginning but I found out that the V belt was not tight enough. But still the saw vibrates.
The Blade is hanging with its teeth over the upper wheel, the side guides are about 3 mm behind the gullet of the teeth, to allow for the movement back against the rear guide.

I have hooked up a central dust collector with enough power. No sawdust inside the machine, but I get enough sawdust on the machine table what did not make it trough the throat plate.

I just received from SCM new guides under warranty and have to set up the whole machine again and take into account what you mentioned.
- Guide post alignment to blade
- Guide alignment to blade
- Leave more space between Blade and rear guide
I hope that covers it and it will make a different.

Thank you!

HI M. Rushing the second message above meant that it lost its intended tone.
The hope is just that the various points made may help to trigger some thoughts - it's difficult at this range to reach any definite conclusions...

Too many posts - but measuring the rate at which you can manually feed representative material on the saw before the guides start to protest would be another way of figuring out a real world number for the low end of the feed rate range you would need on a power feeder.
If the Woodmaster CT is pretty fresh/sharp then it'd probably be best to reduce that figure by a good chunk (maybe 35%?) in deciding the minimum feed rate you need so that the feeder can be further slowed as it dulls.
Don't forget as before that if the blade is very dull (e.g. the teeth were damaged as a consequence of the blade being pushed back and hitting the side guides, or by it's hitting something metal in the work - you don't often get second chances in these matters) then that alone has the potential to increase the required feed force to a level that could damage the back guides...

I have an older SCM/Minimax S600P manufactured by Centauro with the same Lenox Woodmaster CT 1.3 TPI blade. For resawing really dense and wide (12-16") wood, there are several things that I have to do:
1) have a sharp blade
2) tension the blade to 20-25,000 PSI. Many built in tension gauges are notoriously inaccurate. You may want to get, make or borrow a bandsaw tension gauge.
3) my Comatic 3 phase bandsaw feeder at its lowest speed is too fast. I'm using a VFD to slow it down to less than 2 feet/minute