Recently there was a discussion about TS fences. Several people commented about liking the Unifence. I have a Beismeyer. Never had or even seen the Unifence, but I saw that you can buy the slotted aluminum rail. What are the chances you could put a piece of that on a Bies fence, modifying it to be the best of both. Seems like you could drill a couple of holes through the Bies fence and bolt on the aluminum rail for when it would be useful. Lots of T slots in that rail and a place for a sacrificial piece.
Off the top of my head, about the only advantage of the UniFence that you would lose is it's light weight and therefore some maneuverability.
One minor annoyance I have with my Industrial SawStop fence (a heavy duty Beisemeyer clone) is its weight and length, which unbalances me when I try to pick it up to move it to the other side of the blade or remove it completely from the saw. I intuitively expect to be able to pick it up with one fell swoop, but find I need to take a small step forward as I lift it to keep from dropping it back onto the saw table. I would never have that problem with a UniFence.
One ostensible disadvantage of the UniFence is that it deflects about twice as much as a Beisemeyer fence when force is applied to the side of the far end. That would not be a problem with a Beisemeyer fence backing it up.
I had both a Beismeyer Fence and a fancy aluminum one made by Excaliber, I liked the Excaliber because it is held down on both ends and runs dead square and is a good mounting base for jigs, if you want to.
A Beismeyer fence is a rock, and so long as it has the downforce you need, you should be able to mount pretty much anything to it as is, People just use U-channel fixtures, but it would require clamps. If I was going to adapt it to holding a delta fence, I think I would look into making a fitting that would hold that fence to the T square, and set the fence itself aside. You would still be using all the main other parts, and would not have to re-rig your saw.
The other fence that is essentially identical to the Delta unifence is the one made by Felder/Hammer. That would be available (probably at a higher price?) ...
One major difference I can see from the picture of the Felder fence is that it can only be attached to the left side of the support structure. The UniFence can be attached on either side, to accommodate more cutting options and either left- or right-tilt saw blades. I realize that may not be important on a saw like the Felder with a sliding table.
Batty,
A feature of the UniFence is that the rail can be lifted and secured above the table top as well as flat on top of it. This can be important if you are trimming veneer glued to a panel, as the veneer can slide under the fence. If you modify a Beisemeyer fence to support the UniFence rail, keep this adjustability in mind. Note, however, that this feature does not substitute for an auxiliary L-fence, because the UniFence rail cannot be lifted high enough to allow typical thickness sheet goods (e.g., 19 mm) to slide under the rail.
There are two other Unifence features that would be inconvenient to use if you screw the fence to your Biesemayer, and both are related to quick change options, one to slide the fence backward so that the forward end is in line with the saw blade, to allow the wood to escape without getting pinched, and the other to reverse the fence for either high- or low-rise applications. If you screw it fast, you'd have to fiddle screws every time you needed one of those features. Inconvenient, not impossible, but I think I'd try to cobble up sme kind of bolt-head arrangement with an outboard screw knob to engage the channels in the extrusion.
It is a flat steel plate that fits into the channels on the aluminum extrusion, with two threaded rods permanently attached. The threaded rods will have to be long enough to pass all the way through the Beisemeyer fence, and the extrusion is tightened down to the far side with two large washers and two knobs. When you loosen the knobs, the rail can slide forward and back, and also has some play vertically. The rail can also be slid all the way off the plate and rotated 90°, which gives you a very low fence for ripping small parts. Further, the knobs and washers can be removed, and the plate, threaded rod and extrusion moved to the other side of the fence body and reassembled.
If the holes in the Beisemeyer fence were elongated vertically an inch or so (or a second pair of offset holes were drilled), the extrusion could probably be used as an L-fence, since the Beisemeyer fence is taller than the fence body (part #3 in the diagram) of the UniFence.
When I had a saw with a UniFence, I drilled a pair of holes in the extrusion to which I could bolt a sacrificial fence for cutting rabbets. In that regard, sacrificial and other auxiliary fences are easier to adapt to the Beisemeyer fence than the UniFence.
I've never used one of these or even seen one in person so don't know if they're prone to deflection but the idea seems interesting to me. They seem to use 80/20 extrusions so there should be quite a bit of flexibility.
