Observations on Euro style sliding saws

[Mike Heidrick]

Anyone ever put a ball screw and a servo motor/drive on one of those MM and just automate the sliding??

That has to be a crazy money saw too right??!! Those Proscales by themselves are more than a 1023 LOL and that is no fence attached to them. This is no Hammer slider LOL.

[David Kumm]

Anyone ever put a ball screw and a servo motor/drive on one of those MM and just automate the sliding??

That has to be a crazy money saw too right??!! Those Proscales by themselves are more than a 1023 LOL and that is no fence attached to them. This is no Hammer slider LOL.

The Elite S is the big dog of the combo line. That's the heaviest one made isn't it Erik? Dave

[Peter Aeschliman]

Would the cut you are thinking of be the first rip or the second (parallel) one?

I'm thinking of the second parallel cut.

Let me start over with a simple hypothetical. Let's say I have an 8 foot long, 6" wide board. It has already been milled: it's flat, square, straight, etc. The problem is, I need to cut the 6" wide board down to 5.5". I need to take half an inch off. Let's pretend I don't have a planer, where I could put a thick board on edge and run it through until it was 5.5".

With an 1/8" wide blade, that only leaves 3/8" of waste. If I were to use the technique as described, where you move the rip fence over so that the space between the rip fence and the blade is 5.5", press the "keeper" side of the workpiece against the fence, and attempt to slide the board through the cut using the sliding table, how could I hold it down without letting my hands get close to the blade? Clamps wouldn't be able to hold the piece down without hitting the blade.

This is the scenario I'm picturing when I ask how a slider is safer than a standard cabinet saw when ripping.

Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me.

[David Kumm]

Peter, that is where I'd use the parallel stop you see in the picture. Mine is different but the concept is the same. Clamps are a big deal here. Dave

[Mike Heidrick]

Peter, why would you not set the bump to 3/8 and put the 5.5 on the slider's truck?

[mreza Salav]

Peter, why would you not set the bump to 3/8 and put the 5.5 on the slider's truck?

sorry for jumping in here (I have been watching/reading this as I always had similar questions like Peter):
To make the matter more complicated suppose that 6" wide board is only 3" wide (or something like that) and you want to rip it in the middle into half. This is the kind of a rip cut where things become dangerous on a traditional cabinet saw. How can you do this safely on a slider? (again this is a genuine question). thanks

[David Kumm]

sorry for jumping in here (I have been watching/reading this as I always had similar questions like Peter):
To make the matter more complicated suppose that 6" wide board is only 3" wide (or something like that) and you want to rip it in the middle into half. This is the kind of a rip cut where things become dangerous on a traditional cabinet saw. How can you do this safely on a slider? (again this is a genuine question). thanks

I have eccentric clamps in the T slot for that rip- front and back. They should be ordered with a slider. Pneumatic are even better. I like the grrripper for the regular saw. I never liked the push stick thing. Dave

[Peter Aeschliman]

Peter, why would you not set the bump to 3/8 and put the 5.5 on the slider's truck?

Is the "bump" the blue aluminum incra look-alike fence-looking doo-hickey in Erik's first picture?

I looked at that for a while. It looks like there's a stop on the cross cut fence and the bump, which together give you the contact area needed. But how do you go about making sure that those two contact points are perfectly in line with each other such that they are parallel with the blade? Is it difficult to set the cut width each time you want to make a parallel rip cut?

EDIT: alright sorry, I'm being dense. you're saying why not set the rip fence so that it's 3/8" away from the blade and put the keeper side on the slider. duh. That makes sense.

[Kelby Van Patten]

I have a Laguna 6' Pro slider. I love it. Here are my thoughts on sliders in general and on my saw in particular.

1. Safety advantages

* Cross-cutting sheet goods: There is no safe way to do this on a regular tablesaw. On a slider, you get a perfect cut with no risk.
* Ripping a straight edge on a board that doesn't already have one. Again, there's no safe way to do this on a regular tablesaw.
* High-quality riving knife.
* Dust collection is relatively good. Under the table, the blade is surrounded by a nice shroud. Overhead, I have added dust collection that really makes a huge difference.
* Motor does not start when blade shroud is open, ensuring there is no risk of motor starting when you are changing the blade.

2. Simplicity

* Cross cutting long boards: I can cross-cut a long board with 8' of material supported to the left of the blade. Again, there's no good way to do this on a regular tablesaw.
* Eliminating tearout: The scoring blade makes it easy to get a perfectly clean cross-cut on expensive plywood.

3. Other Nice Features
* An extra set of on/off switches in the slider handle makes it easy to turn the machine on and off when there is a large piece of plywood on it that make it a challenge to reach the buttons on the cabinet.
* Micro-adjust on the rip fence is very nice.
* The cross-cut fence has extremely nice flip-stops, making repeated cuts extremely accurate.

Addressing Peter's question, the simple answer is that once you have a straight edge on one side, ripping a parallel edge on the other side is exactly what a rip fence is for (hence the name "rip fence"). It's the one thing a standard tablesaw does really well. A slider does it equally well, and most come with a very nice rip fence (mine did). It's easier to rip large sheet goods on the slider because the sliding table provides a lot of additional support to the left of the blade. If I'm ripping wide material, I'll clamp it to the sliding table as I rip. For material that is not so wide, I just lock the sliding table in place and rip away.

There are two potential downsides to the slider. One is that you have to adjust your stance when you rip. Not much, and it's not a big deal, but people who don't handle change well might not like it. Second is that a lot of aftermarket accessories are designed to fit standard tablesaws, and it may take some work to adapt them to a Euro style saw.

One more caveat is that many Euro sliders do not play nicely with Dado blades. Mine does, but some others don't.

[Erik Loza]

Anyone ever put a ball screw and a servo motor/drive on one of those MM and just automate the sliding??

Actually, some some of the bigger SCMI saws have motor-assisted travel for the slider. I'm sure Altendorf and Martin probably do as well. Never seen anyone do that on a Minimax/Tecnomax, though...

The Elite S is the big dog of the combo line. That's the heaviest one made isn't it Erik? Dave

Yeah.....

I'm thinking of the second parallel cut.

Let me start over with a simple hypothetical. Let's say I have an 8 foot long, 6" wide board. It has already been milled: it's flat, square, straight, etc. The problem is, I need to cut the 6" wide board down to 5.5". I need to take half an inch off. Let's pretend I don't have a planer, where I could put a thick board on edge and run it through until it was 5.5".

With an 1/8" wide blade, that only leaves 3/8" of waste. If I were to use the technique as described, where you move the rip fence over so that the space between the rip fence and the blade is 5.5", press the "keeper" side of the workpiece against the fence, and attempt to slide the board through the cut using the sliding table, how could I hold it down without letting my hands get close to the blade? Clamps wouldn't be able to hold the piece down without hitting the blade.

This is the scenario I'm picturing when I ask how a slider is safer than a standard cabinet saw when ripping.

Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me.

sorry for jumping in here (I have been watching/reading this as I always had similar questions like Peter):
To make the matter more complicated suppose that 6" wide board is only 3" wide (or something like that) and you want to rip it in the middle into half. This is the kind of a rip cut where things become dangerous on a traditional cabinet saw. How can you do this safely on a slider? (again this is a genuine question). thanks

The real answer to both your scenarios is "bandsaw". You can use the slider like a regular table saw to make that cut on a thin piece of solid wood, the old fashioned way with the rip fence but honestly, I would do that particular rip (long and thin) the bandsaw.

Just my 2-cents.

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

[Mike Heidrick]

EDIT: alright sorry, I'm being dense. you're saying why not set the rip fence so that it's 3/8" away from the blade and put the keeper side on the slider. duh. That makes sense.

That's what I would try.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

By the way Steve, thanks for starting this thread. I saw your comment in the sawstop thread and your point was well taken. Hence why I'm asking.

Having re-read your post since my last post in this thread, I think the answer to my question about the parallel rip cut might lie in this paragraph.

Are you saying that you position the rip fence such that you can ride the straight-line ripped edge along the rip fence, but you clamp the waste side of the board down to the sliding table, using the sliding table to push the workpiece through the blade?

Did I understand that correctly? What do you do when you only want to take, say, half an inch off of the width of the board? I know I have to be missing something here. I'm truly not trying to be obstinate, I just want to understand.

Hi again Peter, Yes, you are correct. I like the short rip fence for some of these rips, the one that ends before the blade. It lets me set the rip width, then I just hold the cutoff to the sliding carriage as it passes the blade. You can clamp it, but I usually just use down pressure supplied by me. The rip fences can be slid, and if I want to do a really skinny piece, for instance, I built my kids a little barn for their toys. I needed a pile of 1/8" think slats cut on a bevel, taken off a ripped surface from the bandsaw. The purpose was to simulate shingles, so I wanted the bevel with the rough surface the nasty old bandsaw blade left. To do this, I set the short rip fence as a bump stop, its 2 foot long or so, so I could reference square before the stock ever got close to the blade. As the stock finishes the cut, the ripped small piece is dropped off after the rip fence is ended, so that the little arrow looking cut off is never allowed to be loose between the blade and a fence. I cut 100 or so of these very quickly with this setup. Think of it as a setup like a meat slicer uses.

On a longer or bigger piece, I sometimes use the longer rip fence that ends well behind the blade. Same technique except as the cut nears the end, because you move along the saw, not stand in front of it, simply with a push stick, or I use my hand a foot or so behind the blade, put a bit of pressure on the offcut, and it will follow past the blade with the stock riding the carriage. The key is moving the offcut from behind the blade.

The great riving knives on these machines help make this sort of operation very uneventful.

[Mike Heidrick]

The real answer to both your scenarios is "bandsaw". You can use the slider like a regular table saw to make that cut on a thin piece of solid wood, the old fashioned way with the rip fence but honestly, I would do that particular rip (long and thin) the bandsaw.

Just my 2-cents.

Erik Loza
Minimax USA

I so need to get better at using my bandsaw. I just always go to tablesaw. I love grippers too for thin small cuts. Even they are not perfect and the blade is going right over the top of my hand.

[Mike Wilkins]

Like Mr. Van Patten, I also have the Laguna Pro 6' Sliding tablesaw. For the size of my shop (16 X 24) it is an ideal size. This machine replaced the 1964-era Delta Unisaw that I owned for years, which is a fine machine by itself. He makes some nice observations which are spot-on and accurate. One thing that I noticed right off the bat is the increased safety a slider can offer. On my Unisaw, I can remember many times making a cutting operation in which my fingers were close to the spinning blade; like an inch or so. Not smart I know but felt I could get away with it. With my slider, my digits are miles away from the blade, the riving knife reduces the chance of a kickback (had a couple of scary ones on the Unisaw), the added overhead dust collection makes my lungs happy, and power is more than adequate.
As for ripping: I have done it both with the fence and with the board secured to the sliding table. I devised a couple of hold-down devices using the Bessey hold down clamps to hold the board while traveling through the blade. I also use the rip fence but not often, except for really long pieces like ripping a 4 X 8 sheet of ply.
Again all these operations are done on the side of the sliding table, removing you from the path of kickback. Yes it does take some getting used to, but the transition is not a long process.
I feel there would be a lot more sliding tablesaws in shops around the country if the manufacturers/dealers did more advertising and exposure of their machines. Other than one article in FWW covering the 5-function combos, I have never seen a publication covering sliding tablesaws (the British mag Cabinet and Furnituremaking does on occasion).

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I feel there would be a lot more sliding tablesaws in shops around the country if the manufacturers/dealers did more advertising and exposure of their machines. Other than one article in FWW covering the 5-function combos, I have never seen a publication covering sliding tablesaws (the British mag Cabinet and Furnituremaking does on occasion).

Mike, I agree. I live in the middle of no where, and I have had three people drive 400 plus miles to come see mine because they wanted to know more. 11 have called, emailed or sent letters. That does not count any contact here. People just have to go to somewhat extraordinary lengths to get good intel on these machines. I think the pros have access to better information because the marketing has been targeted to them, and these type of machines are common in the industry. Not so in the consumer market. I think it's obvious that there is a desire by recreational woodworkers to learn more.