The Framers Forum

Hi everyone. I wanted to pick your brains if possible please? We are going to buy a new Keencut Excalibur 5000 pretty much straight away.
I have heard conflicting theories as to whether its better to install and set up yourself or have the supplier do it for you. For reasons such as alignment, squaring etc.
Does anyone have any personal experience?
Thanks in advance
Mike

I would suggest doing it yourself. I'm assuming that it will save you money as well as teaching you how to resquare it/check it in future. We've installed and resquared our Fletcher twice, it's not a big deal, but if you are wall mounting it, be sure to have two helpers to hold it in position while the fixings are tightened.

Yes, DIY - unless it's wildly different from the SteelTrak (which we've moved three or four times), then very straightforward. Two or three people helps, as does having room to navigate the machine through assembly.

Keencut write good instruction sets.

I have moved and installed a lot of these in my time, very easy to do, one tip I would give is, once you have attached it to the wall and you have squared and calibrated it, and it's working spot on, run a lenght of timber along the floor in front of the two legs, dril and fit the timber to the floor, so that the legs can not move away from the wall, if they do, then it could go out of square I always use timber and not had any problems, found this out way back in 1989 when we had one of the first ones (system 4000 then)

Thank you everyone.
Mike

This is really a no brainer you learn so much about the machine and importantly you set it up to your meet your quality standard (i.e. squareness and calibration) and not to someone else's. It is a good idea as suggested to have someone help with lifting it from horizontal to leaning against the wall but it stands on two legs and I think the Fletcher is purely wall mounted which is why you would need two helpers with that (think I am right there).
As far as squaring goes there is a video on YouTube https://youtu.be/XA3tmLAQicU that will help. The old System 4000 would definitely have benefitted from the wood on the floor but it shouldn't be necessary on the Excalibur, see how you go with that.

Good choice by the way.

Thanks to everyone. Was a great idea to diy the install. All done and like said by many learnt a lot in the process.
Perfect, thanks again