Power feed lift and lower ram.

[worntorn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSIgCOrFEw4

I built this lift/lower setup quite a number of years ago and it has been a handy unit. For several years this was our main saw. Eventually we got a large line rip saw which does the bulk of the ripping, but before that this 5 horse General 10" did all of our ripping plus the usual shop table saw duties. We still use this saw with the power feed any time finished material is being ripped, or for bevels. The big saw won't do bevels and it's drive system leaves little claw marks on finished wood.

Normally when a power feed is attached to a saw like this it gets bolted directly to the table. This renders the saw useless for cutting up large sheets of plywood or medite.
We wanted to use the saw both as a power feed rip saw and a plywood saw.
This meant finding a method to get the power feed out of the way when it was time to cut plywood.

The solution was to mount the feed on a ram which retracts into the floor. The ram is lifted by a 36" long hydraulic cylinder in a 4' deep hole in the floor. I welded up a little oil tank with an air inlet and oil outlet (the grey tank in the clip). The black valve controls the flow of oil out of the tank and into the lift cylinder.

This job involved some welding, some machining, some concrete cutting and a whole lot of digging. I think it took me an entire day to cut out the hole in the reinforced concrete floor, then dig 4 feet down into hardpan. After the digging was done I put a sono tube in the hole and lined the entire cavity with concrete. After the cylinder was mounted we filled the concrete lined cavity with old hydraulic oil so that nothing down there will ever rust.

Glen