I started a small job this morning, a cabinet for some kind of war game board game. It will house 12, 24"x34" game boards, will fold out on top to form a 24"x72" map table and will be mobile. 9 sheets of Baltic birch type plywood in 1/2" and 3/4" thicknesses. Not pretty by any stretch of the imagination but it should be functional. Apparently the game/games can go on for years.
Anyway this is my first paying job using the SawStop. So far I am very happy with the choice I made.
The hydraulic lift mobile base works great, it moves left/right, forward/backward, and or sill spin. All four wheels will swivel and the wheels only carry the weight when you want to move the saw.
The rip fence seems to be top notch. The fence faces are very much like the Biesemeyer fence with the Baltic birch aides covered with plastic laminate. The fence easily glides due to the fact that it has extra glide pads that bump the angle iron support when it is being moved. The cursor and rule are easy to read. The only problem I had setting an exact measurement was when using a dado set and using a steel rule to set the distance from the blade. Each time I locked the fence it would move. This is ONLY a problem when setting the distance without using the built in rule. This situation is more of a "getting use to how it locks down" problem than anything else. Once I learned the fine subtleties of that maneuver the problem disappeared.
The left miter slot was a touch narrow on the front end. The miter gauge that came with the saw, my Incra miter gauge and my Dubby miter sled all got in a bind at that point. The remedy was about 8~10 lite passes with a file and all was well. As a side note, this may not have actually been a saw issue. I use TopCote on my tools and Bostitch has replaced TopCote with another named product that virtually does the same thing except it goes on even heavier than its predecessor. I put on 3 relatively heavy coats immediately after cleaning the protective oil coating from the surface. That was a mistake, that was way too much so wiping off the haze was a bit tough. The directions said to apply 2 lite coats. Hey! 3 heavy coats have to be better, right? All I remember was that using a heavy coat of Boshield on my Jet when it was brand new only resulted in me seeing rust the following morning. I went back to the TopCote immediately after. Anyway I probably got too much of the new protectant in the miter slot and gummed it up so to speak.
Cutting the 3/4" slot in the solid, SawStop brand, throat plate was interesting. Keep in mind that you use a different brake for the smaller diameter blade so this was the first time I switched the brake out. That was a relative piece of cake. Then I mounted my Forrest Dado King dado set and put in the blank insert and then covered with a piece of wood. You cannot see any thing and you are hoping all is well in side the saw when you turn it on. You have a $80 brake and a $300 dado set inside there. Hopefully as you are raising the blade through that phenolic insert nothing upsets the brake. NO PROBLEM! Whew!
As demonstrated with the quarter demonstration I showed you, the saw runs very smoothly. Picture pushing a board across a granite topped island counter in your kitchen. You turn on the saw and begin cutting the wood, you hear the saw but you don't feel anything.
With little effort the saw cut 81 linear feet of 3/4" x 1/4" deep dado's this afternoon.
I may have mentioned that I thought a color other than black might have been better for the saw. The gloss powder coat finish is so slick that blowing off, brushing, or vacuuming with the DC gets rid of the dust quick, so after a days work the saw did not look like I would have imagined. It is still pretty clean looking. I wish the fit and finish on any of my vehicles was this good.
When I turn the saw off the blade stops quickly, even with the dado set there is no appreciable difference in stopping time, off the top of my head I would say 2~3 seconds. That does not seem like a big deal except when you are standing there watching and waiting for the blade to stop.
The Paddle start stop lever will take more getting used to. As intended you can bump it with your leg to turn off the saw. That is also easily accomplished when not intended. ;~) And that lead to thinking that I may have had a faulty motor switch. During one of the unintended power downs I quickly reached down to turn the saw back on and got NOTHING. I removed the wood, pushed the paddle back in and pulled it to start, the saw started. This happened about 3 times and I finally discovered that you cannot restart the saw motor after shutting it off until the blade comes to a complete stop. After discovering that I no longer had any issues with starting the saw back up.
Anyway, so far so good.