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Festool MFS Fence System Instruction Manual - Using The Mfs As A Large

Manual is about: Advanced Cutting and Routing Techniques

Summary of MFS Fence System

  • Page 1

    Advanced cutting and routing techniques using the festool mfs fence system text and photos by jerry work isn’t it interesting how every so often a simple appearing new tool or technique comes along that offers us the opportunity to make a quantum leap in our productivity? Once put to use, we can’t b...

  • Page 2

    Since saws and routers are subjected both to in-thrust forces which tend to push the saw or router against the fence as well as out-thrust forces which tend to push the saw or router away from the fence. Far too often the result is a less than perfect straight cut. The innovative engineers at festoo...

  • Page 3

    The first few cuts using this set up are often a revelation for the user. Suddenly it is easy to break down that large sheet of plywood or mdf that is so awkward and potentially dangerous to cut on a conventional table saw. The user is blown away by the fact that the first cut with the circular saw ...

  • Page 4

    But measurement errors can again creep in. Rips, especially thin rip cuts, are another matter all together. Most users find it dif- ficult to accurately set up the guide rail for rip cuts as they again must rely on meas- ured marks on two edges of the work piece. Then they must align the front edge ...

  • Page 5: What Is The Festool

    What is the festool mfs fence or guide system? At it’s heart, the mfs is a very precise, complex aluminum extru- sion 80mm wide and 16mm thick. It comes in 200mm, 400mm, 700mm, 1000mm and 2000mm lengths shown in this photo sitting on top of a festool guide rail. That is roughly 3 1/8” wide, 5/8” thi...

  • Page 6

    Head machine screw to pass through to thread into a short “v” nut. By sliding that short “v” nut into the side “v” track in an- other unit, two extruded pieces can be assembled at right angles to one another. The picture above shows how a standard festool “f” style clamp (48957 and 489571) fits into...

  • Page 7

    Four such extruded pieces assembled at right angles to one another form a very square and ad- justable rectan- gle. A ball headed 3mm allen key is supplied to allow you to easily tighten or loosen these connecting points so you can slide the extruded pieces to form rectan- gles of any size up to the...

  • Page 8

    The special nuts that fit into the “v” slots. This allows the heavy metal angle pieces to be used to locate the extrusions rela- tive to the sides or edges of a work piece and/or to fasten the extrusions to the work piece. Festool also supplies a machined alumi- num piece shown below that is 50mm by...

  • Page 9

    This anti-tip piece always with maximum support for the overhanging base of the router. Note how the lip on the guide bushing sits in a recess in the anti-tip piece so, no matter where you go with the router, this anti-tip piece stays in place doing its job of stabilizing the router so it stays flat...

  • Page 10

    While there are many uses for this ar- rangement, the most common is to route a recess into the face of a work piece to receive what is called “open field” inlays like the sample shown here. Adding inlays such as these to a top, front or sides of a chest or shelf unit is a fast way to really increas...

  • Page 11: Using The Mfs As A Large

    Using the mfs as a large and very accurate square. Now matter what kind of furniture you build, it is critical to be able to create very accurate square components that are ex- actly the size you want them to be. By aligning all of the outer edges and ends of the mfs extrusions, you form a very accu...

  • Page 12

    So one tenth of a millimeter is just .004” (four thousands of an inch) which most of us would have a hard time seeing even with the most accurate measuring stick. If the cut lengths of your extruded pieces are off by just one tenth of a millimeter, the resulting diagonal measurement will change by m...

  • Page 13: Using The Festool Mfs

    Using the festool mfs fence system to accu- rately position your guide rails this is one of the most basic things you will do every day whether for cutting stock to size or for routing grooves or for ma- chining joints. There are several varia- tions, but one of my favorites is using the metric mark...

  • Page 14

    Posite the pivot so it is rigidly controlled. Use a block of wood to register the mfs rec- tangle with the front edge of the guide rail and bring the individual profile up against the side of the rectangle so it is exactly 90 degrees to the leading edge of the guide rail. The shot above shows a clos...

  • Page 15

    Them set for this photo the two 30 marks conveniently align as is shown below. Tighten the clamps again on the individ- ual profile and release the clamp on the rectangle as you now have calibrated the scales so zero length of cut is when the two 30 marks line up. To help me re- member where zero is...

  • Page 16

    Now that we know we can set any length of cut easily and with great precision we are ready to do some cutting. Set the rectangle for the desired length of cut. Let’s say we want to cut this glued up maple board to 350mm long. Once the rectangle is clamped down at 350mm back from the front edge of th...

  • Page 17

    Now we can make the cut as shown be- low. Wear ear protection, use the festool dust collector (the ct33 shown below the table behind me) and make sure you have the right blade mounted for the cut you are about to make. With the ts line of circular saws it is so fast and easy to change blades that th...

  • Page 18

    To act as your rip fence. For longer rips turn the rectangle so the long edge is parallel with the guide rail to properly support the work piece if you need to. If you need narrow strips that are longer than the length of the table, you can join the two tables end to end in- stead of side to side. T...

  • Page 19

    Saw blade is turning away from you and is held by the uncut portion of the work piece until after the leading edge of the blade passes the far end of the work piece. With the blade set to cut just a couple of millimeters deeper than the thickness of the work piece, the cut off piece is only exposed ...

  • Page 20

    Actly the same distance from two ends of a work piece by simply moving the rec- tangle to establish the desired cut line on one end, make the cut, reverse the work piece and make the other cut. Remember, with festool guided rail rout- ing it doesn’t matter which way you move the router since the gui...

  • Page 21

    I took the time to first band the maple top with bloodwood all the way around as well as on the front of the shelf. You can see (photo previous page) the un- derside of the top with its two sliding dovetails to receive the two sides (to the left of the top in photo). The sides have two horizontal sl...

  • Page 22

    Tos on the right side of the previous page. I removed the dust collector hose and cord from the router to make it easier to see. The router is set to a centerline 20mm forward of the front edge of the guide rail just as we talked about earlier. Note that this cut is stopped at the front so you need ...

  • Page 23

    Earlier i said one of my favorite set ups was this use of the mfs rectangle and fixed side extrusion as a very accurate rip fence or depth stop to cut work pieces as large as the guide rail you are using. But, it is not the only such set up. Let’s next move to using the mfs com- ponents as “story st...

  • Page 24: Using The Mfs Compo-

    Using the mfs compo- nents to accurately locate the guide rail to be paral- lel with and the desired distance away from the edge of a work piece another common set up where the mfs earns it stripes as a valuable addition to festool guided rail cutting and routing is where you want to establish a cut...

  • Page 25

    Adjustable spring loaded pin to use as an edge reference at the other end. For our purpose i suggest a couple of simple shop made guide rail registration saddles and a couple of shop made slid- ing stops to hook over the back edge of the work piece. Both are shown below. By calibrating to the front ...

  • Page 26

    I plowed a 13mm deep groove 80mm wide so the saddle fits snugly over the mfs profile and snugly into the space on the guide rail. That way the profiles will project out behind the guide rail at very close to a 90 degree angle which will add to your accuracy. I then drilled a couple of 5.5mm holes in...

  • Page 27

    To cut off a longer piece than that will al- low, i attach another mfs profile to the end of this one using two of the profile joining “v” nuts. The second profile zero mark will set against the 1000mm mark so it is easy to set precise measurements beyond one meter. To make the back edge stops i use...

  • Page 28: Now Let’S Turn Our Atten-

    Now let’s turn our atten- tion to using the mfs system in advanced rout- ing applications everything we have talked about in terms of aligning the festool guide rails for cut- ting work pieces applies equally to routing operations as well. Most all routing operations require some means of positionin...

  • Page 29

    Collet. The guide bushing is placed over the cone shape which holds it concentric to the collet as the guide bushing is tight- ened down. On the festool 1400 the guide bushings snap into place, auto- matically being held concentric to the collet by the tangs and receivers ma- chined into the guide r...

  • Page 30

    Cept in corners where the guide bushing used to cut the female recess will pro- duce radiused corners while the male piece cut will have sharp corners. One or the other must be hand trimmed for the male to fit perfectly into the female re- cess. This is usually not an issue and can be done eas- ily....

  • Page 31

    Base and the template (as in most through cut applications), then the bearing needs to be mounted on the cutter end of the router bit (the left most bit in the photo on the previous page). In either case, if the bearing is larger than the router bit, it will act like the guide bushing in our example...

  • Page 32

    Want to find pairs where the difference in diameter between the bushing and the ring is twice the diameter of the router bit itself. These pairs will cut female recesses of any shape with matching males that fit into those recesses which will be smaller than the template by a known amount, which i r...

  • Page 33: Using The Festool Mfs

    Using the festool mfs profiles as an adjustable rectangular router tem- plate so far we have only looked at the mfs in terms of using its various components as fences or guide rail positioning aids. If you assemble four of the mfs extrusions as a rectangle with the ruler markings on the inside it no...

  • Page 34

    Draw a line around the in- side so you can put it back in that same spot. Also draw a line a to form a lip a bit wider than you want. This is to allow you to cut out the majority of the cen- ter with a jig saw or “recip” saw before you do any of the routing. As you can see from the photo below, it d...

  • Page 35

    The guide bush- ing moving in a counter clock- wise direction. Go slowly as you are removing a lot of nasty mdf material, and carefully guard against tipping the router. Be sure to use dust collection with your router and wear ear protec- tion. The result will be a very clean, smooth cut-out, in thi...

  • Page 36

    Never had a 1000 or 1010 router bog down no matter what i was routing. All you need to do now is just drop the router plate into place and start using it. Total time? The first time you do it, it will take you 20 to 30 minutes start to finish, after that no more than 15 minutes all be- cause the mfs...

  • Page 37

    You want it perfect, get a flush trim bit that matches the radius on your router plate. There are a few things to watch out for. First, don’t try to get the template to be too tight a fit to the router plate. Most flush trim bits are really a few thousands smaller than the bearing so the bit won’t t...

  • Page 38: Open Field Inlay Work

    Open field inlay work one of the fastest way i know to add value to your furniture is to do open field inlay work. This means inserting inlays into recesses cut in the surface of your work pieces. A nice inlay on the top or sides of a table or chest can add 50%, 100% or even more to the price, yet i...

  • Page 39

    A solid piece and then did a resaw cut on the band saw to free it. The female was cut into the walnut using the same tem- plate and offset guide bushing we talked about earlier. In this case i was using the fes- tool metric guide ring set you can see in the photos above and to the right. The festool...

  • Page 40: Band Inlays

    Tail, the perceived value of the piece goes even higher. Sometimes it is an excited phone call a week or two later and some- times it is a gasp on first inspecting the piece. Either way the value proposition they experience is dramatically in- creased. Inlays nearly always look best if the inlay pie...

  • Page 41

    Tem, so, while it is off topic for what we are talking about right now, i will include a couple of photos to show this detail as well. This photo shows the segmented sliding dovetail shelf support system cut into the front of the back (walnut) and the back of the front uprights (maple). The sum of t...

  • Page 42

    Now back to band inlays. Band inlays can also be set in an open field using the mfs rectangles as templates. Establish a long narrow rectangle with an opening the same size as the guide bush- ing you intend to use. Make sure the guide bushing will move easily along the full length of the inside of t...

  • Page 43

    Once you start adding band inlays and open field inlays to your work, you will find many aesthetically pleasing ways to combine the two. Take your time and do your set ups carefully and you will be in- laying like a “master” in no time. There is one more type of inlay i want to cover. That is where ...

  • Page 44: There Is No Right Or

    There is no right or wrong way to assemble the mfs system compo- nents as with most well engineered systems, there is no “right” way to use the mfs or any other festool components, nor is there a “wrong” way, only “normal” and “unusual” ways of using them. I think this is an important concept to kee...

  • Page 45

    Neither fence is “right” or “wrong” to use with the miter head and both have their place. The “normal” fence receives a festool supplied flip stop (shown in the photo on the previous page) but has no ruler markings. The “unusual” mfs pro- file used as a fence requires an easily made shop-built stop ...

  • Page 46

    Marking) back by 100mm as shown in the photo above. That keeps the end of the mfs profile back out of harm’s way, yet i can still use the markings on the edge of the mfs profile to very precisely set my length of cut by just adding 100mm to where ever i set the stop. If i want a piece to be 350mm lo...

  • Page 47

    Robust fence close to where i stand and close to where i will start the saw cut. If it is a small work piece like the one shown, i can easily grab the piece and hold it snugly to the fence with my left hand while i operate the saw with my right hand. Someone who is left handed would likely reverse t...

  • Page 48

    Nents as much as you like without worrying about what someone else might consider “normal” or “abnor- mal.” if it works for you and provides a safe and productive set up, you have proven it is right for you. 48.

  • Page 49: Conclusion

    Conclusion so, after nearly 50 pages of text and pho- tos on various ways to employ the inno- vative festool mfs universal squaring, aligning, cutting and routing fence and guide system, is it right for you? Is it worth the price? It is not inex- pensive ei- ther for the starter kits or for the long...

  • Page 50

    Sitional accuracy that you simply cannot achieve any other way that i know of. Additionally, positioning the work pieces together this way makes not only possi- ble, but easy and fast, the cutting of in- terlocking sliding dovetail joints, some of which go front to back on the piece, some side to si...

  • Page 51

    Squaring techniques using mfs profiles outlined earlier. They are accurate, very fast, and it is often easier for me to plop heavy or large pieces on the multi- function tables for cutting than it is for me to wrestle those pieces up on my sliding table saw by myself. Could i justify the mfs system ...

  • Page 52

    You only do it once in a great while, use sticks. If you do it frequently, the mfs profiles will pay for themselves quickly on just this one application. So, the bottom line on “worth it” and “right for you” is a function of how and how often you will use the mfs system components and how you value ...

  • Page 53: Appendix A: Horizontal

    Appendix a: horizontal router jig for the festool multi-function table i often use sliding dovetail joints for many of my furniture designs. I like them be- cause they are self-aligning, self- squaring, self-locking, and very strong. With all these highly desirable features it is odd to me that dado...

  • Page 54

    The jig is constructed from standard fes- tool catalog mft rail pieces, festool knobs, hardwood scraps and a couple of pieces of hardwood plywood, resin coated board or mdf. Mft side rail sections form both the structure for the jig and guide the router base plate while it is raised or lowered to ex...

  • Page 55

    Commodated is limited only by the size of the mft(s) to which it is attached. Even very long work pieces can be accommo- dated by putting two or more mft’s to- gether with table joining elements avail- able as a standard stock item from fes- tool. Photos above show the completed unit mounted to the ...

  • Page 56

    Adjustment is easy, smooth and very re- peatable. No locking is necessary since the weight of the router holds the setting well. Dust collection is maintained through the standard festool 1010 dust collection port. The jig goes on and off of any side of a multi-function table. Large and small pieces...

  • Page 57

    Appendix b: inlay and template routing using the festool metric guide bushing and ring set to cut matching female recesses and male inlays using a female template, select the offset desired and then use the lettered pair of the guide bushing and supplied rings shown. For example, if you want a 15.3m...