Most expensive assembly table

welcome back to the channel i'm jason ben a couple of weeks ago i posted a video uh discussing a really effective way uh to break down sheet goods and make sure that you get you know perfectly square cuts every time and while i wasn't focusing so much in that video on the tools that i have inevitably the most common question that i got from that video were all things related to my assembly table setup so in this video i'm going to be sharing a deeper dive into the assembly table top specifically that i have the accessories that i have for it the way it all works and just why it's so effective and share with you some of my overall thoughts now that i've been operating with this for about a year now so let's just go ahead and get right into it in this video i'm not going to be talking about the base of this assembly table it's more going to focus on the top itself and the accessories that i use for my cross cut station in order to get such good results if you want to find out more about the base and a general overview of the top you can go and watch my video that i did during my you know shop build out series where i talked about the assembly table the reason i'm not going to be talking about the base is because i'm actually going to be rebuilding the base and once i start showing you very specific features about the top i'll explain why my assembly table is comprised of three mfts side by side one of the most common questions that i get is why did you use three mfts when they're so expensive when you could have just made your own for me the biggest thing was i already had one mft and i really wanted the ability to use the side rails for other accessories which i'll show you here in just a moment each one of the mfts is just sitting on top of my assembly table surface it does not move it's very heavy and they're all connected together using the mft connectors which are specifically designed to connect one mft to another and the closest thing that i can relate that to is when you're putting two tracks together and those have connectors same exact principle it's just they go in the rail system on the side of the mft the last thing about the mfts side by side that i did differently is i actually turned the mft so the mfts are vertical instead of horizontal i did that for a couple of reasons one i wanted it to not be so long because if i had three end to end this would be really long but not so wide so by turning these i not only have a very wide surface but i have one that's plenty long enough to support any materials and when i talk about the width the thing that was so important to me for this setup was i wanted to have much greater cross cut capacity and that's what we're going to get into so now some additional features when moving to the side so as you'll be able to tell i have my tables perfectly flush to the end of the base so what that allows is for me to put things on the end that overhang lower perfect example of that would be the vaxis another example would be these clamps i have these clamp racks from rab tools they're just 3d printed clamp racks but they hang down lower than the actual surface so because this is flush to the end of my table i have easy access around this if i needed to clamp something to the side using the extrusion that's provided on the mft and i wanted to clamp it vertically nothing would be impeding that so now what you're looking at is the front and this is the side i spent the majority of my time but just like the end it is flush to the tabletop this allows me to again be able to use the aluminum extrusion in the event that i wanted to use something vertically but there's nothing inhibiting it i have perfect access to anything and i'll be able to keep boards 90 degrees now this space right here that you see because my base is four foot by eight foot and the mfts are not quite four foot by eight foot this is why i will be rebuilding the base because i want access to all four sides that is one of the only downsides to this current setup and by me rebuilding this entire thing and making some modifications to the base it will give me full access to all four sides and it will really change things for me on this table now the next two things i'm going to show you are the key to this entire system this is a pivoting track system and this is made by dashboard pws as you can see it's loose right now because i'm actually going to walk you through exactly how you set this thing up to get it square but this is what the entire system is based off of and i think this is probably like a you know third generation of this he's been making improvements i'll leave a link to his website down in the video description if you want to check it out he's got a whole system but this is the key component to my crosscut station so that was the backside this is the front side so this is the mating piece the track sits on this pin and you can raise this up and down based on the thickness of your material and then it just locks in place here with this knob now some people might be saying why didn't you just use the one that comes with the festool mft and the reason is because it is not tool-less as where this is tool-less and where that really comes into play is in the event that i did need to take it off it is very very quick for me to do so i can just slide it off of the rails like that before we get into the second part of what makes this entire system so beneficial is i'm going to walk you through how these are actually set up okay so currently the front and back bracket are loose and we want to keep them loose for a reason so the first thing that i'm going to do is i'm going to grab my rail and this bar right here if you loosen these bottom nuts this raises up and allows you to slide the track right onto the rail so it slides back and forth just like that nice and easy so i'm not going to tighten that down just yet the next thing that i'm going to do is i'm going to come to the front and i'm going to make sure that my pin is inside of the little catch that is underneath the track i'm going to lower the back here down so it's perfectly flat on the table now once i've got both of those attached you'll see that i'm able to move this back and forth pretty freely now the next part of the process is to utilize these arrows that you see right here to set everything up right so how we gonna do that as you can see right here this is my existing cut line which we'll discuss here in a little while i'm moving this just so i can get a visual representation of where it is right now obviously you could set this up anywhere you want but the way this works is i'm going to place in these bench dogs and we'll just go one towards the top one towards the bottom i place that in there like that i place this one in here like this and now let's move it away just to give you a better representation so i can move this right now and it'd be cockeyed right but these are references so i'm going to slide them up nice and tight against that once i've done that i can then lock my front making sure that i still have contact here and then i can lock the back bracket right here now that's as far as we're going to go for right now but it is nice and tight it's in place the rail is referenced off of these and as of right now it's in a perfectly straight line and now i can go ahead and remove these and put them back in the drawer and not need them again until i move this all right so now i can raise my rail straight up and down now we're going to talk about the next key component to this entire system and that is the fence so this fence right here is from bench dogs uk and the version that i have is the metric version but they also carry a imperial version the length of the one i have is 1450 millimeters as you can see it has a stop uh they actually just came out with an all metal stop which i just haven't put on here yet this one has a support that actually goes directly in line with the cut line for your track so this is cut exactly to the edge of your track and then on the back side here i have what's called fence dogs also from bench dogs uk and as you can see these fence dogs were designed specifically to be able to attach to this fence and they can be adjusted very easily loosening these knobs and sliding them left to right the lower portion of the dog as i'm sure you could guess is going to go into one of the holes on the mft so let's go ahead and get this installed now because i already have all my cuts and everything marked it's very easy for me to reference where this fence needs to go i have my fence installed the edge is right on that line i'm able to move my stop very freely so now what i want to do is actually get this thing set up like i was getting ready to make a cut so let's just say i'm using uh you know three quarter inch or 18 millimeter ply i'm going to take this i'm going to place it up against the fence and the reason i'm doing this is because this is the thickness of my material so it's going to make setting it up a lot easier so as i drop down my track you'll see that my track sits up because i previously had the back in the front all the way down so now i'll be able to use this as my reference so i'll start on the back side loosen this one knob and bring this up until it sits nice and flush on the material once that's good i'm going to lock that down now i'm going to raise the front up to ensure that the pin is in the locating hole and now i've got everything nice and steady so the very next thing that i'm going to do is i'm going to make sure that this is 90. and the reason why that is important is because one you want to have 90 degree cuts but sometimes when you set this up when you're tightening things down it might shift just a little bit and when i have this wide of cross-cut capacity a very small error can mean a lot at longer distances so since using this for about a year now the way i like to check for square is using a big triangle this is from tso it's part of their mtr18 setup but what i'm going to do is i'm going to place this triangle the reason i like the large triangle gives you way more surface area and it's perfectly flat against the material so you can butt right up against something so i'm going to put the first side against the fence and what i actually like to do is loosen the front so the back is actually still do i necessarily need to do that no but this offers me perfect alignment every time now you might be wondering why i loosened the front and i brought you in overhead just to show you so if i slide this up it's touching here but obviously i've got a gap so we know that that's not perfectly 90. but if i leave that front loose and i slide this over until i'm making perfect contact all the way down now i know that i am 90. so i'm going to tighten the front and we're good to go now i'm going to raise this up okay i raise the track up it moves you can see it moves a little side to side well now i'm going to put it on the pin it's on the pin now let's check it again flat up against the fence perfectly 90. lift it up again move it one more time perfectly 90 every single time okay so it's good to go we're ready to cut perfect 90. now some of you guys might be saying well that's great but look how much time it took you to do that yeah it took a little bit of time a little bit of setup initially so just to walk you through i'm gonna take all of it off i'm gonna take all of it off we're gonna set it back up again and i'm gonna show you that once it's set you don't have to do anything right and before i talked about i like it because i have really wide cross cut capacity so just to give you an idea if i wanted to i could have over 40 inches of cross cut capacity over 40 inches of cross cut capacity i've got 55 inches of support to the left side of the cut i've got 34 and a half inches to the right side of the cut and now that this is set it's that way every single time except the thing that i can adjust at this point is how wide i want my cross cut capacity to be so let's say for instance i didn't want to reach all the way up here to make a cross cut because i'm only cross cutting 12 inch pieces well i can move the fence closer and it doesn't change anything with this so let me go ahead and take this off now i'm going to come to the back loosen my knobs and i can slide my track right off we'll just set that right here for now go ahead and take out the fence and we'll just set it there for now now to flip this the other way i said that we can go from one width to another and still have that accuracy so we'll go ahead and set up our fence real quick but my piece up there well now we got to put our got to put our guide rail back on come to the back slide it on make sure it's on the pin which it is lock down our guide rail my board everything's good i'm on the pin okay i brought you in close again just so you can see flat up against the fence slide this over no rock perfectly 90 to the fence again now i would like to address one of the more common questions that i get and that is why are you cutting into the table when you have the space to cut in between the tables even though this table is designed to be cut into a lot of people just can't stand or fathom the idea of doing it but that's what it's for everyone that's what these tops are for so yes i could do that and you also could do that keep something in mind though one of the things that prevents the tear out on the bottom of the board is the fact that it is sitting on a surface and it is stopping those fibers from peeling back if you had it over the opening that wouldn't be the case the fibers would just freely be able to go the others you'd run into is if you accidentally set the depth a little bit too deep you could cut into the aluminum but i mean you could cut through this if you did the same thing but that is why i do not have it in one of the gaps i purposely have it on here because i don't care if it cuts into this on one line over and over and over again i hope this video for all of the people that asked me the questions very specifically about what my setup is i really hope this answered those questions now to be clear this is a very expensive setup three mfts alone is very expensive but for me it just does exactly what i need it to do and the capabilities of this assembly table surpass every single assembly table i've ever used or built and because this would be so expensive to replicate uh is the reason why i never made plans for this because i just one i didn't think they would be that popular and two it's a very very costly expense to build something like this if you're using the mfts now if you were to build your own mft setup but just kind of adopt the fence and the you know pivoting track then that's a whole other conversation but this setup specifically uh would run quite a bit of money and i've said this in many other videos to include the last overview that i did of this this is not my design um i wanted to put three mft side by side i got on festival owners group and matthew byington you can follow on instagram and i'll i'll link his page down below i saw his setup like this and i basically built mine and modified it based off his so i always say that every time i talk about this because i don't want anybody to think that i created this amazing setup i did not i've just modified what somebody else already did to fit my needs if there's anything that i did not cover in this video uh that you want to find out more about please leave them down in the comment section below and if you're interested in any of the products that i put on here i will put links to those i'm not affiliated with dashboard i'm not affiliated with bench dogs i will leave links to that stuff just so you guys can go quickly find it see what the cost is if you guys choose you want to order something like that i'll leave the links down there if you guys want to find out more about me and everything that i do go over to benswoodworking.com or if you want to listen to the podcast that i'm on called the green suitors podcast definitely go check that out on whatever podcast platform you use so until next time get out in the shop try something new and i'll see in the next video thanks

Channel: Bent's Woodworking

Views: 117,334

Keywords: woodworking, woodworking tips, woodworking tips and tricks, how to, woodworking how to, woodworking channel, instruction, Jason bent, bents woodworking, woodworking tools, beginner woodworking, woodworking for beginners

Id: 4jsTo6WQ9Hc

Length: 16min 34sec (994 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 12 2021