How to make a table jigsaw from a manual

The purpose of the machine and the principle of operation

Jigsaws are designed to make curved or straight cuts in sheet metal along a pre-determined contour or along guides.

Unlike hand tools where the saw is fixed only at one end and holds its shape exclusively by its own elasticity, on jigsaws the saw is fixed at both ends.

Such a machine tool can become a woodworking, benchtop, sawing, 4-in-1, made of a circular saw, drill and cutter, etc.п.

The main elements of the design are:

• A frame with a stretched saw;
• crank mechanism that provides reciprocating motion of the frame;
• work table and bed.

The electric jigsaw successfully replaces the crank mechanism, driving the frame with a saw. There are simpler designs, where the jigsaw is simply mounted in the upside down position to the work table from below, and the saw blade either holds its position at work due to its own elasticity, or is fixed from above by guides or a spring-loaded bracket that moves together with it during the work. This allows to reduce the power loss during transmission of power to the frame, but requires the use of extended saws that are not often available on the market.

Advantage

The main advantage of the jigsaw is the ability to make precise cuts, the absence of the saw’s retraction to the side. In addition, the advantages of jigsaws over hand tools are considered:

• more effective visual control over the direction and accuracy of the cut;
• possibility to use guide rails;
• it is possible to set special templates allowing to obtain a lot of identical workpieces;
• the saw blade is narrower, which facilitates reducing the radius of curvature and cutting out more complicated parts.

Together with these advantages appears another one. there is no need to organize a working place for sawing, since the machine has a suitable plane for this purpose.

Important! Along with advantages there are also obvious disadvantages. it becomes much more difficult or impossible to saw internal details, only cutting along the outer contour.

Variants of table jigsaws

Table-top devices of this kind can be made both from scratch and by means of modifications of existing devices.

Option 1

To make a new desktop mechanical jigsaw, you need to first acquire the following tools and supplies:

Firstly, we prepare the frame; a duralumin pipe will work well for this purpose. In the process of making the frame, a passageway must be provided, through which the electric wire will be laid, which will provide the tool with power. Use copper sheet to make a U-shaped frame, which is then attached directly to the frame. At the point where the frame connects to the jigsaw handle, screw the frame with screws.

Then we take the plastic base to drill holes in it and fixing slots. On the prepared base, fasten the jigsaw so that the saw blade can pass freely through the hole made. With the help of clamps, fasten the ready device on a flat surface, for example, on a table.

Variant 2

You can use a sewing machine to make a jigsaw, which is not necessary to repair. To make such a tool you will need the following materials and tools:

Unscrew all the bolt fasteners from the lower parts of the machine structure and completely remove the entire working system with the thread. Remove the metal fixing pin by knocking it out and remove the drive shaft. Unscrew 2 more bolts and do the disassembly of the panel that covers the sewing machine, its removal is quite simple. Carefully remove the sewing needle and get to work.

First of all, work with the groove for the needle. Expand it to such a size that it could accommodate a saw. An emery board will help with this task. Choose it based on the size of the hacksaw blade. Try to match the size of the kerf to the saw as closely as possible. After reaming the socket, you can install the blade in place of the former needle holder. And finally, turning the wheel, you need to check a few moments to:

• there was no contact between the saw, the panel and the presser foot;
• was free passage of plywood under the saw in the upper position;
• pulling materials through in a smooth, jerk-free motion.

Such jigsaws are suitable for use with plywood, balsa wood and plastic, and when using an electric jigsaw, such a device can be transformed into an electric jigsaw.

It is not difficult to make a homemade machine. You can find many drawings of this product from plywood. With a jigsaw, your own hands and improvised tools for a short time assembled a simple but functional device.

The scope of application of jigsaws is extensive. They are used for sawing figured products from a variety of materials. And also machines are needed for cutting lumber. The outer contour of the workpiece remains intact. If you use a variety of files, the homemade jigsaw will perfectly process natural wood, plywood, particle board, plastic, metal, in particular aluminum.

Examples of drawings of a jig saw with his own hands, which runs on muscle power, have repeatedly been given in various magazines of the Soviet era.

The saw blades for this jigsaw are produced as a flat blade.

• frame (A).
• Working table with a slot for the saw (B).
• Large drive pulley that serves as a handwheel (D).
• Small drive pulley. The drive is combined with a crank mechanism (D).
• Levers (C).
• Pedal, which unwinds the flywheel through the crank (E).
• Saw tensioning assembly (G).

The master, constantly pressing with his foot on the pedal, spins the flywheel. The flywheel motion is transferred to the second pulley through the belt. Which in turn makes the crank mechanism with the saw blade move.

The saw blade runs smoothly if the flywheel is correctly balanced without tensioning and with an evenly distributed mass. Such a machine for sawing out of plywood allows quickly make a lot of simple single-type products. Time and efforts for sawing are considerably reduced.

With this design of the machine the size of the initial workpiece has a limit. It depends on the length of the arms (B). When complicating the pattern, it is necessary to rotate the product around the saw.

Since the foot drive does not provide a fully uniform stroke and limits the freedom and imagination of the master, then more often such machines are replaced by electric.

How to make a simple jigsaw from an electric jigsaw and plywood with your own hands

It is easier to convert an ordinary hand jigsaw into a stationary one. Your own hands need to make a convenient table, and then you only need to fix the tool on it. The algorithm looks like this:

• From a sheet of plywood cut two rectangles. the cover and the base of the future table. Surfaces of blanks are processed with sandpaper to achieve perfect smoothness. Standard size of cover and base for the hand jigsaw is 250×300 mm
• The hand jigsaw is measured from the top to the bottom. After that, two identical uprights are sawed out of plywood and screwed to the base. The posts should exceed the height of the hand jigsaw on 2-3 cm
• With a hand-operated jigsaw remove the sole, put it on the plywood cover and drill mounting holes in it for fastening. They also make a slot for the saw blade to move. The base plate is put back, the plywood cover is put on the tool and the two parts are fastened to each other. The bolts should be screwed into the prepared mounting holes so that the hand jigsaw does not wobble. The lid with the tool is lowered onto the base with the uprights and fastened with screws. The jigsaw must not touch the plywood base with its lower part

At this stage the jigsaw from a hand jigsaw with his hands is actually ready to work. The design remains to be secured to the worktop in the workshop with a clamp.

Warning! When installing a hand jigsaw converted to a machine, it is important to position the fixture so that the tool cable can freely reach the outlet.

Blueprints of electric machines

The detailed study of any device is much easier when there is a detailed diagram with a description of each element. Thanks to the exact names of the details with the sizes, the general idea of the principle of operation of the mechanism becomes more evident. Below we have placed several detailed illustrations, as to collect the el jigsaw with their own hands with detailed drawings is much easier than relying only on their representation of the features of the design.

We hope that the presented diagrams, will fully clarify your understanding of the device of such a mechanism and provide useful food for thought in the assembly of your own jigsaw.

Machine types

A large number of human activities, in one way or another, are related to production. Including products made of soft materials such as wood. Production of such details is mastered both in industrial scale and in small handicraft workshops. Some parts are produced with the jigsaw blade. It is used for producing blanks and flat workpieces such as plywood or solid wood. This tool is available in different models. handheld, benchtop, cordless, etc.

Hand jigsaw

Such jigsaws are made as a shaped frame that resembles a horseshoe. At its end there are nodes for fastening the jigsaw blade and the handle. This jigsaw is most often used for home work to process plywood and plastic sheets. Low cost and ease of operation are the obvious advantages of this tool.

Domestic electric jigsaws

This tool is referred to as an electric tool. Its key advantage is high speed of operation. It can be quite used for work at home. Unfortunately, home electric tools are equipped with low-power motors, and this limits their use. As a rule, it works with sheet material of small thickness. In addition, such a tool can only work in 20/40 mode, that is, after 20 minutes of continuous work, it must rest for quite a long time.

By the way, there are cordless models of household jigsaws. Their disadvantage is that to the weight of the jigsaw itself adds the weight of the battery. But on the other hand it is suitable for work in hard-to-reach places.

Professional cordless jigsaw

In manufacturing, and in everyday life, many wooden parts may have high demands on the quality of workmanship and production speed. To perform such works, a professional jigsaw is used. The parts that are used to make such a device have high quality requirements for manufacturing. In addition, the design and manufacture of professional jigsaws take into account the requirements of modern ergonomics.

Homemade Jigsaw Table Machine

The tool of this class is distinguished by a long cycle of work, in theory, it can work with short, in a few minutes, breaks, the whole work shift (8. 10 hours). To ensure continuous operation, high-quality electric drives and powerful batteries are used if it is a portable tool.

Jigsaw on the table

Electric bench-mounted jigsaw

It is installed on the workbench, preferably fixed to the table top. Using a jigsaw ensures that proper operation will be safe and quite comfortable. Stationary installation ensures accurate cuts. It is often used in the processing of sheets, without crossing their boundaries. Jigsaw working organ. moves reciprocatingly. Table-top jigsaws have relatively powerful motors, and this allows you to process sheets of great thickness.

Professional equipment is made with observance of all safety rules for such devices.

Industrial jigsaws

These are mass-produced products, designed to work in production. Power units are usually connected to 220/380 volts. This makes it possible to work in two, or even three shifts. The power unit and the drive enable the processing of sheets or packages assembled from them with great thickness.

To increase the convenience of work and obtain additional technological capabilities on stationary equipment can be equipped with additional devices, such as a rotary table.

Of course, jigsaws are equipped with a control unit that allows you to configure the operating parameters.

Jigsaw machine from an electric jigsaw

Not everybody has the need to make decorative, curved cuts on a regular basis. Often, to solve such problems, home craftsmen are satisfied with the usual handheld electric jigsaw. Not everyone will want to buy a bulky and quite expensive unit for one-time use and further dust collection. Still, in everyday life, sometimes there appears rabotenka, requiring the most accurate and precise sawing. In this case, you can put together a fairly simple jigsaw machine with your own hands, using a minimal set of materials and a little imagination.

Today, there are many different variants of the table jigsaw, of varying degrees of complexity and efficiency, presented on the network. After reviewing dozens of products, we settled on the most interesting and at the same time simple assembly that meets the main requirements for the quality of cutting. To assemble a similar jigsaw from a hand jigsaw with his own hands, can even beginners, having at their disposal the necessary tools. For the assembly will require:

• Sheet wood chipboard (3 pieces): 600x400x20 (length, width, height)
• A spring
• Profile pipe (1.5 m): 30x30x2 (length, width, thickness)
• Jigsaw
• Flat washers (4 pcs)
• Bolts for washers and joints
• Self-tapping screws for table top assembly

1.The first thing to do is to assemble the base of the future machine. For this We take 3 prefabricated sheets of particle board or other thick enough wood material and make a construction out of them, similar to the letter “p”. Fix around the edges with self-tapping screws. For better stability and reliability, we can make a backboard.

In the center of the surface of the assembled tabletop we mark the future holes for a saw and a few fasteners for a jigsaw. For this purpose we remove from the jigsaw sole, put it by an opposite (not flat) side to the future place of fastening and make some points through slots of the sole. At this stage it is necessary to maintain accuracy, as, the jigsaw installed from below should have as accurate as possible, perpendicular to the lateral edges of the table, in order to avoid distortion of the saw during further work. We drill the marked points by 3-4 mm with a drill bit and the central one (for the saw) by 10 mm. As on the photo below.

After fixing the jigsaw under the table top, we proceed to construct the upper arm from a square tube to serve as a tensioning device for the saw blade. As a fixed point we cut off a 300mm long piece of pipe and, at one end, weld fixing elements (angle bars or lugs). The movable part should be slightly longer (about 45 cm). The connection of the two elements is made by means of a bolt with a nut and a n-shaped metal element, welded to the end of the stand, as in the photo below.

A washer is welded to the end of the movable arm, which will be directly on the saw, and it will serve as the upper attachment element.

Before installing the assembled tensioner design to the tabletop surface, be sure to make sure that the end of the arm is directly over the hole drilled for the saw. If the top mount goes too far to the side, the saw will often tear, making sawing difficult. When the ideal position of the tensioner has been verified, we fix the construction to the tabletop with bolts.

Since the jigsaw is not adapted to work with thin saw blades, we make a simple adapter for it. For this we take an old saw blade, grind with an angle grinder teeth, cut to length of 3-4 cm and weld a usual nut to the end, in which will be clamped machine saw by means of the second nut and bolt.

When making such an adapter, pay special attention to its length. If it is too big, the nut will hit the bottom of the table top, which may lead to tool breakage.

When the saw is clamped in both mounts, all that is left to do is to tighten it and get to work. Implementing such a function is simple. Fix the spring to the back of the moving lever with the bolt and nut, and fix the opposite part to the table top at the desired length. Determining the tension is very easy. To do this, it is enough to run your finger over the jigsaw, like a guitar string. A high sound will mean that the device is usable.

At this stage, the assembly of the elementary device is considered complete. To better understand how to make a jigsaw from a jigsaw, we recommend watching the following video.

Jigsaw with your own hands

Recently I got very interested in sawing with a jigsaw, I do not know why I did it. It started with the fact that I needed to cut some gears from plywood.

And then it began. At first I sawed the gears by hand, then I thought, it is certainly good to jigsaw a muscle, but if you automate the process, it will be much faster!

So, to begin with, get acquainted, this is a hand jigsaw for artistic sawing.

(all pictures in this article were found on the Internet)

To saw, you need saws, they are thin as a wire, with sharp teeth. Such saws used to be sold in packs of 50., I recently went into a store and they started selling them by the piece. In an evening you can break a couple of pieces of these saws.

For sawing we also need a special table, it can be a board with a cone-shaped slot, screwed to the table with screws or a screw clamp.

For the convenience of attachment saws in the machine, it is better to use a special device that will compress the outline of the jigsaw, so you can easily change the saw without effort. With the help of a wooden eccentric there is a compression.

And now about automation. In the following photo you see a desktop jigsaw factory type, on the Internet you can find a sea of different modifications. It is worth this thing is not very expensive, but even if you really want in my city I can not find such, but in principle and to what.

Industrial machines are certainly good, but I’ll probably use them for a couple of months and give up the activity, and in general, such a machine, as I learned you can easily assemble yourself from plywood and wooden bars.

In the following photo I used an industrial hand jigsaw and a spring for blade return.

So, we can easily assemble a table electric jigsaw with our own hands at home. I personally did, but I have a special design, in this article, no photos of mine, but I’ll certainly lay out, as well as video in operation.

Blueprints home-made jigsaw, although much of what is outlined here can be replayed to your liking.

Jigsaw table with your own hands (sawing tools)

Compact and relatively mobile tool for sawing, has earned a reputation as a practical device, used around the world. Universal jigsaw, capable of making straight and curved cuts, including at an angle. With its impressive capabilities, this device could become a leader in multi-purpose. Unfortunately, certain design features made it more of a narrowly focused tool, but a good potential.

From the disadvantages of working with an electric jigsaw, it is quite inconvenient to carry out precise, straight sawing. The main reason for this disadvantage is the thin saw blade, which easily changes its direction during sawing. The second reason lies in the design itself, which over time loosens and noticeably reduces the evenness of the cut. Fortunately, these flaws, can be ignored in the presence of special devices for a jigsaw, which can make their own hands. Further, we will tell you how to make a special table and stop for maximum precision sawing with your tool.