My cuts, and the factory cuts, are out of square by about 0.2 degrees and this makes for structures, when they are several feet long, that are noticeably out of square. Have others run into this issue? What kind of saw are you using and how square are your cuts? Am I being unrealistic expecting my structures to be square to less than a 32nd of an inch over 3 or 4 feet?
I'm using end connectors (https://8020.net/3381.html).
When I first built the below shower enclosure, which is about 2' x 3', it was out of square by about 3/16" (difference between the two diagonals). I flipped half of the tubes over, and it is now perfectly square, but the bottom is no longer flat. I will fix that by bolting the 4 corners down to the van.
After investigating, I cut all the tubes with the same face pointing up. My saw blade was not quite square to the fence, and I made all of the tubes as parallelograms (/===/). Below is a picture showing that the cut is not square. Note that I would not accept a cut that is as bad as shown, but after adjusting my saw I am still seeing about half this angular error.
Since all my tubes were parallelograms in both axes / directions, flipping half of them over does exactly what you would expect, fixes the out of square, but throws the tubes out of plane (ie base is no longer flat).
I have a $100 Craftsman miter saw I bought about 20 years ago, but it has not been used heavily, which has a nonferrous blade. I adjusted the saw and, judging by my square, one axis is square. The other axis was slightly out of square, and I adjusted it, but it seems the saw bed is not flat as the blade is now square on one side, but slightly out of square on the other side of the blade.
After investigating and adjusting, I am making all cuts on the side of the saw where the bed is square to the blade, and I am flipping the tubes to make trapezoids (/==\) instead of parallelograms (/==/). One direction now makes "perfectly" square cuts, but I am still not quite getting square cuts in the other axis / direction - I think the cuts are out about .125" over 3 feet, which works out to an angular error of about 0.2 degrees, but I do not think there is any way I am going to get my saw dialed in better than that. I also checked the squareness of the factory cuts, and they have about the same error - in other words my setup gives cuts that are as square as the edges from the factory.
Your thoughts?
I'm using end connectors (https://8020.net/3381.html).
When I first built the below shower enclosure, which is about 2' x 3', it was out of square by about 3/16" (difference between the two diagonals). I flipped half of the tubes over, and it is now perfectly square, but the bottom is no longer flat. I will fix that by bolting the 4 corners down to the van.
After investigating, I cut all the tubes with the same face pointing up. My saw blade was not quite square to the fence, and I made all of the tubes as parallelograms (/===/). Below is a picture showing that the cut is not square. Note that I would not accept a cut that is as bad as shown, but after adjusting my saw I am still seeing about half this angular error.
Since all my tubes were parallelograms in both axes / directions, flipping half of them over does exactly what you would expect, fixes the out of square, but throws the tubes out of plane (ie base is no longer flat).
I have a $100 Craftsman miter saw I bought about 20 years ago, but it has not been used heavily, which has a nonferrous blade. I adjusted the saw and, judging by my square, one axis is square. The other axis was slightly out of square, and I adjusted it, but it seems the saw bed is not flat as the blade is now square on one side, but slightly out of square on the other side of the blade.
After investigating and adjusting, I am making all cuts on the side of the saw where the bed is square to the blade, and I am flipping the tubes to make trapezoids (/==\) instead of parallelograms (/==/). One direction now makes "perfectly" square cuts, but I am still not quite getting square cuts in the other axis / direction - I think the cuts are out about .125" over 3 feet, which works out to an angular error of about 0.2 degrees, but I do not think there is any way I am going to get my saw dialed in better than that. I also checked the squareness of the factory cuts, and they have about the same error - in other words my setup gives cuts that are as square as the edges from the factory.
Your thoughts?