Vertical panel saws have never appealed to me, although I know many people like them. They look like a bad back waiting to happen, having to bend down to lift pieces off the machine, then there's the problems with the kerk closing up on rip cuts. Still, I am 6'4" so reaching most of the way across a horizontal 8x4 table is no problem.
The tilting table is ingenious, though isn't the part that appealed to me, I'm more interested in the saw control aspects.
I find ripping with the long guide to be straigh forward and accurate, it's the cross cutting that causes the problems
Funny you should mention my previous idea Tony. I dug my drawings out and had another look at the idea, and it still has considerable appeal. One thing I've been finding with the Festool MFT ( a purpose built crosscutting table, limited to about 600mm cross cut) is that it is difficult to keep it perfectly square, and when preparing two cabinet sides of say 750mm by 575mm, it's all too easy to end up with rhombus shapes with as much as 1.5mm difference
The idea that I had before, the crosscut fence driven by two leadscrews one at the front and one at the rear of the table, with an interconnecting timing drive, is the one solution I can think of that guarantees parallel cuts. Everything else is, basically, a T square of some kind, and needs to be extremely rigid to be accurate.
Table saw fences don't need to be as accurate because even if they are slightly out you are still going to get a parallel cut, not so with the Festool system
So I might be looking for a couple of three metre lenghts ot M6 studding after all
John
