Anyone Upgraded Sawstop PCS 1.75 to 3HP?

[Robb White]

What Sawstop means with regards to the thin kerf blades is that the braking system won't work as engineered and is there for liability reasons. If I was you, which I'm not but if I was I'd disable the braking system slap a thin kerf blade on rip to my little hearts content and make sure to keep all body parts away from the blade. Would seem to be an easier and cheaper solution and if you want to be really anal about it call up Sawstop and talk to the folks and see what's what.

-Rob

[John Schweikert]

Make sure your blade, fence and miter slots are all dead square. Make sure the splitter is perfectly behind the blade. Adjust anything needed so you are confident the machine is set correctly for ripping and any other cutting. Get the gullets of the rip blade up so they show. I know some people want half a tooth as all that pokes out but for ripping, get the blade up and get saw dust cleared out during the cut.

Make sure you are working with properly squared wood. A bow lengthwise will cause binding, slow things down and degrade the cut quality.

I think the setup or blade are the issue. The 1.75hp isn't the problem. A thin kerf blade isn't needed on this saw.

[Jason Lester]

Ripped some shorter pieces this afternoon. Much easier time. I think the long (10'), wide (19"), and heavy boards were probably moving around a little on me and releasing some tension as I was ripping that was binding the blade.

[Jay Bailey]

Have you considered a different blade? A sharp 24 tooth rip blade goes through 8/4 white oak pretty well for me on my 1.5 HP Unisaw. When I need to saw something thicker than that I switch to a thin kerf ripping blade. For really thick stuff I use my bandsaw. How much 8/4 stock are you realistically going to cut?

John

I agree with the 24 tooth rip blade - this makes a big difference over a combination blade. However, personally I will not use a thin kerf blade, with a SawStop or otherwise. Conventional wisdom is that the thin kerf is less likely to kick back because it is removing less material. However, that also means the kerf is thinner, and MORE likely to pinch the blade because it is thinner. I would stick with regular kerf blades, but use a specialized rip blade if you have a lower power saw.

Jay