Flip bench

The riser is the idea that makes one bench out of three machines. A flip section with a tool on one face and a flat face on the other would leave the flat face 4.5 in below the miter saw's table, so the sections either side could never be its wings. Putting a 4.5 in tall box on the free face fixes that: in bench mode the riser top is the bench top, and when the miter comes up its table lands exactly where the riser tops of the sections beside it are. The table saw gets the same treatment from the other direction, sunk on a platform until its table is flush, with the blade running along the bench so the flat sections are its outfeed.

The riser is also where the ballast goes. Each section has to balance about its own shaft: the miter saw pulls 546 lb-in and the planer 1,081, so 5 lb lead ingots lie on a removable deck under each riser top: ten for the miter (50 lb) and twenty-four for the planer (120 lb). That leaves 5 lb and 13 lb at the bench edge, on the tool side of neutral so a section never runs away. The riser top is screwed, not glued, so the last of the balance is settled with the real tools an ingot at a time, and the lead stays sealed in the box.

The bench stands on its own frame: four 1-1/2 in cross rails on the floor, one under each panel, and no side rails, so the floor under both swings is open. Four retractable step-down casters, 200 lb or more each, sit on the inside faces of the end panels at the long edges; a pedal drops each wheel and lifts the bench 3/4 in to roll, and retracted they add no height. The shaft is at 30.5 in and the bench top at 37.75; the miter saw's corner sweeps a 26.3 in radius and clears the floor by 4.2 in, and the planer's passes its casters with 0.8 in to spare. Each box is a 4 in torsion box open along both long sides, carried by a flanged shaft collar at each end plate on its own 1 in shaft in UCFL205-16 flange bearings mounted on the panel faces inside the bay, so panel B carries a bearing on each face and neither shaft passes through it. The tool bolts to a 3/4 plate that fastens to the box with six 1/4-20 bolts into T-nuts.

The lock is positive in both directions: a 1/2 in spring index plunger through a steel bushing in the outer panel of each section drops into one of two bushings in the box's end plate, 10 in off the shaft line, so it indexes at 0 and 180 and snaps home by itself; a draw latch on the shared middle panel pulls the box tight so there is no play. The bench parks under the tool cabinet in bench mode with 10 in to spare and rolls out before any tool flips up. Printed on the Core One: plunger keepers, a holster for the latch keepers, T-nut alignment jigs, a dust hood adapter for the miter saw and a zero-clearance insert blank for the table saw.