Simonburrows":3pgioph8 said:
got to be very acurate and also used for small runs of cutting to length so need acurate stops
How accurate is accurate? In length terms would a home-made support table with a block of wood screwed to it be accurate? That certainly works as a length stop for me when doing repeat work as is a lot more rigid than the Festool stops. For site work every stop I've used seems to be universally flimsy, but it rarely impacts on the installation as you aren't normally doing hundreds of cuts so a "creeping cut" approach works well
On the crosscut "accuracy" score my experience is that the larger the blade diameter of an SCMS the less accurate it will be, especially when making bevel trim cuts (where only one side of the blade is supported in the material) because the larger the blade the more they tend to distort in the cut. Same goes for the chassis of the machine. For that reason on one install where we had two Makita SCMSs, an LS1214 (12in) and a smaller LS1013 (10in) the smaller machine was used a lot more. It flexed a lot less so the cuts were more accurate.
I've used the big DWs and they similarly can suffer from flexing. The Festool is a lot of money and I'm not convinced that it's really worth that much more. We had one on loan a while back and yes, it's accurate, and a wll built piece of kit, but did we really need it? No. I suppose it depends on where you regard the cost/benefit tipping point lies.
Edit: As an aside on accuracy, has anyone thought about whether you can cut an accurate angle on
any SCMS? I know that Hitachi and Milwaukee make mitre saws with digital angle read outs but the Hitachi only reads out in 0.5 degree increments. Any
decent panel saw worth it's salt can knock that into a cocked hat.
