Cutting piezos and not your fingers.

[LelandCrooks]

Having cut several hundred piezos at least, it still makes me nervous. Letting my son do it made me even more nervous. Here's a very simple mod that gets you out of the way, minimizes the chance of a cut gone wrong throwing out of the jig. I cut the 45's on the sliding miter box, but this would work on the 45 tablesaw jig also.









It pinches them tight. Just pulls up against the body of the tweeter. For the reversed cut you have make for the outside piezos on an array you need a notch for the screw to fit in on the first cut side.

[LelandCrooks]

I should add, this does not allow you to trim the screws as in the plans. Only the body of the piezo itself. I trim the screws and their housings on a grinder. Takes another step, much safer.

[SoundInMotionDJ]

With the recent DR redesigns to accommodate the melded arrays, is an "alternate" placement of the piezos in the array possible? If you could glue the array up with piezos alternating direction, you could skip the trimming of the screws all together. That would be even safer.

--Stan Graves

[WB]

I see I'm not the only one with a freezing cold shop.

[gdougherty]

With the recent DR redesigns to accommodate the melded arrays, is an "alternate" placement of the piezos in the array possible? If you could glue the array up with piezos alternating direction, you could skip the trimming of the screws all together. That would be even safer.

--Stan Graves

This is exactly what I did after reading the DR280 plans and seeing the arrangement to pack a bunch vertically. All my melded arrays are made of tweeter horns trimmed down to a 32nd or so under 1", which is pretty much just the element housing width. The nice part is that doing this way, my table saw blade stays just low enough to cut through the mounting rim of the horn and I have little fear of running them all by hand. The first cut is no problem, the opposite side though requires a low spacer against the fence so the cut edge runs straight. Otherwise the screw mount sticks out and makes a straight cut near impossible. I cut down enough horns to make 8 14-element arrays in a little over an hour once I had my spacer and measurements worked out.

[djtecthreat]

I always liked the jig DaveK made shown here,

http://billfitzmaurice.net/phpBB3/viewt ... &sk=t&sd=a

[DaveK]

Thanks. I hesitate to talk about that jig in a thread about saw safety, but I'm very happy with it. The reason I hesitate is that I hold the tweeters in the jig with my fingers as I slide it across the blade. That puts my fingers within 2 inches of the blade. Needless to say, I'm very careful.

[gdougherty]

Thanks. I hesitate to talk about that jig in a thread about saw safety, but I'm very happy with it. The reason I hesitate is that I hold the tweeters in the jig with my fingers as I slide it across the blade. That puts my fingers within 2 inches of the blade. Needless to say, I'm very careful.

Alternate your tweeter orientation, leave the horn housing intact, and raise the blade just high enough to cut through the mounting rim. It's significantly safer.

[djtecthreat]

Thanks. I hesitate to talk about that jig in a thread about saw safety, but I'm very happy with it. The reason I hesitate is that I hold the tweeters in the jig with my fingers as I slide it across the blade. That puts my fingers within 2 inches of the blade. Needless to say, I'm very careful.

I think your jig is at least 100% safer than trying to feed them through the saw without a jig. I think I like doing them on the table saw with a jig like that better than trying to do it with my chop saw.

[pwfirst]

I like the jig alot, I'll use it for my next build. I bought a blade for cutting plastic for $7 and it did a grate job with out melting the plastic. Phil

[Harley]

Ok, here's my Piezo Melded Jig.

I've taken ideas from the other jigs and because of fast production required and safety needed, this works a treat


Here's the general view shown sitting on the saw bench to make the first and second cuts. Just flip the jig around to do the 45 degree cuts. Where my jig differs is that it has a push block each end for the left hand and also a pinion arch for placing my piece of aluminium angle under ( this angle has foam underneath to grip onto the piezo tops ) and clamp own on the piezos.




Putting the clamp bar ( in my case aluminium channel with foam underneath ) into the pinion arch. The pinion arch is closed at the end to stop the clamp bar pushing right through


With the right hand, clamp down on the piezos.....


..and with the left hand push on the push block


Flip the jig around - same procedure for the 45 degree cuts

[David Carter]

Ok, here's my Piezo Melded Jig.

Excellent! Thanks for sharing!

[LelandCrooks]

Would you move to the frickin states so I can come over and steal stuff out of your shop?

[Tim A]

Nice. I like the part where your hand stays away from the $*&%^ blade!

[bgavin]

Would you move to the frickin states so I can come over and steal stuff out of your shop?

+1

Or help you make bail.