There you go, smart idea. Advice and or actual experience, perhaps a hands on trial would be the best answer to you questions. As indicated this has been discussed here to some length and many dislike the company and therefore the saw because of the way it was being introduced in the early days. They wanted the government to require that this safety devise be added to ALL saws. Many calimed that the saw would never make it to market because of the lack of interest and or money. It's here, and apparently it is liked my more than a few thought.
Either way, it is a good idea to to the toughy feely thing with any sizeable investment.
I have been using one at work for about four months now, and it is a great saw. We all know about the nickel test, well, this saw passes the dime test. I can stand the dime on edge with the saw stopped, turn it on and it hardly even wiggles. I have not told my kids about the safety feature because some would intentionally trip it to see it work. Some of my advanced kids know about it, but I have asked them to keep it to themselves.
Believe it or not, one of our school janitors wanted to see how it worked and touched an allen wrench to the spinning blade and tripped it. Ruined the blade and a cartridge. I was pissed. Another janitor told me who did it and I confronted the dumb turd. He fessed up and bought both out of his own pocket.
According to Frank B., and everything I've seen myself backs him up, any "UniSaw, pre 2003, and with the marathon motor", and you will be getting what us old-timer's would expect when buying a "UniSaw".
As does Woodcraft. And the safety feature was tested (inadvertently) b= y a student in one of our classes - worked great, only a bandaid was needed= .
They're getting very popular with commercial sites and schools. A loca= l large cabinet shop has 15-20 of them and claims to have already saved several=
Wayne, don't give up too soon. I'm a new woodworker (maybe not in years, but in number of hours spent on it as a hobby) and I've received way more advice from this group than I could ever hope to contribute in return.
There are some who can be abrupt in their response, but keep in mind that in a newsgroup nobody owes you an answer. If someone takes the time to type out a response to your question, that's an act of generosity.
Plus, I think if you look back at your three questions, they truly have been answered in previous discussions. That's why so many people just respond with "Do a Google News search".
Might look at Grizzly 1023 series too. I don't know what shipping into Canada costs but it is in a real similar class as the Unisaw and Jet Cabinet saws.
Not true. Quote your source. We've been through this before, twice.
and their have been many reports of new Unisaws
True, quite some time ago. Any damaged units were replaced under warranty. Most discovered at the distributor, did not go to the customer. Has nothing to do with the quality of a unit delivered in good shape.
For a while Delta blamed the shipping
For very good reason. Trunions were breaking from a specific tip over which generally happened on shipping docks during LTL shipment.
Either way, Jet, Grizzly and Powermatic would probably be equal
Today's Unisaw is equal in design to any Unisaw going back to the mid eighties. What has changed is the location of assembly, the fact that some of the machined grey iron is from the orient and the fact that the motor is WEG from Brazil. Because of this I would prefer a pre-2003 unit, however, I wouldn't say that the WEG motor is less powerful, efficient, or reliable than the Chinese motors used on most imported saws. I would simply prefer Marathon. And of course PM66 is excepted, not in the same class with say, Grizzzly and by design different type of trunion/yoke assembly
Texas Tool Traders. They told me this when I was compairing a Unisaw to a Jet. The Unisaw sat on the show room floor with a broken trunion. A Delta rep e-mailed me direct concerning this issue in so much that Texas Tool traders could not repair the saw because of a trunion BO status. The rep assured me that he would look into resolving the matter.
The broken trunion on the saw that I saw was about 6 years ago.
Frank normally I would agree. But, how is it that the brand saw that arrives damaged is the Delta Unisaw? I read on this news group from a respected poster that Delta later admitted that the trunions were being improperly torqued. A DAGS should show you that comment if you are interested. Regardless, if a particular brand tool is having a problem with transportation or manufacturing, that is a QC problem and it is that brands problem until the problem is resolved.
To be fair, there have been many reports of Grizzlys being delivered tipped over and up side down. Oddly many reportedly had only superficial damage.
Perhaps Delta would not be in the shape it is in today had corporate greed not entered into the equasion and continued to deliver a compeditive quality product.
I really have nothing to gain one way or the other concerning the problems Delta is having or has had. I own and have owned a few Delta tools and strongly considered the Unisaw to be my first choice when buying 6 or 7 years ago but then I went to the local dealer and listened to his comments, the reps comments, and the posts on this group, and then directly compared the Unisaw to the Jet cabinet saw, well you get the picture.
I am not saying that the Unisaw is a bad choice, again I am only saying that the Unisaw is not what it used to be and the QC has not been up to par with the competition.
Why were the other brand saws not being tipped over like the Deltas? Was Delta being targeted? This went on for a few years IIRC. Why was packageing not improved to prevent this? QC does not stop at the factory door. Perhaps equipment built to withstand a boat ride holds up better on the docks.
Leon has a point. When I worked at Delta, we had two common failurs in the older unisaws, trunions and starters. The starters we used in Canada were prone to failure on the contact points. The trunions coould just macigally snap. We used to believe it was QC. The later generaion ones were better. Still my favorite, but the SawStop is getting my attention. I still have all
Anyways, thanks everyone for your opinions. I am going to explore it, along with Delta and a couple of others. SWMBO is getting real concerned with my old saw, so maybe she will let me spring for a "safer" saw.
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