I decided I was finally fed up with using a Hoover vacuum box as my outfeed table for my vintage Powermatic 65 tablesaw. Recently I scored an interesting custom-built solar panel conveyor table for $80. Here's what it looked like on the manufacturing floor:
As you can see, it's made of aluminum extrusion (not 80/20 but very similar to their 40 Series ultra-light profiles) so I was able to easily reconfigure it as a shell for a real outfeed table. The profiles cut very easily on a miter saw, no special blade needed but it does create a mess and the aluminum shavings are stubborn and don't like to be vaccuumed.
I'll skip the boring extrusion assembly pictures and go right to the good stuff.
Here's what I wanted in an outfeed table:
1) Adjustable height on all four corners
2) Casters so I can move it around the shop and detach it to use as an assembly or fabrication table if needed
3) Miter track slots for an eventual crosscut sled I'll be building (soon, I hope)
4) The ability to affix it to the tablesaw in the event I want to move them both around at the same time
5) On a whim, decided to add a 20mm hole pattern over half the top using the totally awesome Parf Guide System
Here's how it looks:
I had some extra carbonized bamboo plywood, but not a single piece large enough to make the whole surface. I was trying to do this project a bit on the cheap, so I decided to glue a few panels together with dominos. It came together nicely, but you can definitely see where the panels meet. I don't care about this, actually I think it looks cool.
Stole the hinges and door pulls off a Salamander Designs AV cabinet. These are higher end AV cabinets that are often dumped on Craigslist. They use aluminum extrusions for the vertical supports, and all of their hardware fits inside of standard aluminum extrusions.
The doors didn't have a stop and I was considering making a complicated magnetic closure but decided to re-use a component out of the solar panel conveyor parts bin.
My first welding project: connecting two bolts of different sizes together to form a thread adapter or sorts. Sure, I could have paid $30 for an actual set on Amazon, but why not use my welding skills? Didn't even have to add filler metal. The black baseplate is threaded, so the height of the table can be changed by loosening the top nut and rotating the casters in either direction.
On a whim, I decided to add a 20x96mm hole pattern on the top. The Parf Guide System worked wonders here, and the TCT forstner bit, to my surprise, was still super sharp at the end of cutting these 80 holes in bamboo. The larger stainless drill stop, added to Parf Guide System shipments from TSO, really helped he as it let me control the depth of hole boring to minimize backside tear-out. The real way to solve this is with a sacrificial backer board, of course, but I was trying to do this with everything assembled.
Had to be precise on one axis with these hole locations and I lucked out. Here you can also see the chamfer I added to the 20mm holes. Ended up using my OF1400 with pilot bearing chamfer bit to pull this off crisply.
No workshop project is perfect and this is no exception. After routing the miter tracks I realized I blew through a domino. Attempted to patch it with a glue plus sawdust mix, then some wood filler, then some dark wax. Ended up just making it look worse. The lesson: just leave it be.
With height adjustability, I also needed a way to adjust the height of the mounting brackets that link the outfeed table to the table saw. I did this with another part from the "solar panel parts bin," a simple right angle bracket connected to the extrusion via slip-in t-bolts and a small hole I drilled into each side of the Biesemeyer rail. Since this rail does nothing but connect the cast iron table to the laminate side-table, it won't cause an issue to drill into it.
And I made sure the mounting bracket automatically lines up the miter slots as well, without any adjustment necessary. I intentionally oversized the miter tracks on the outfeed table to provide room for error.
Not a bad little setup.
