Hey Guys,
My last few weekends have gone into building this vertical panel saw, thought I'd share how it turned out... I used the 80/20 series 15 extrusions with the linear bearing blocks. I'm very satisfied with the sliding action with zero slop in the linear slides - 80/20 includes a shim kit with the linear bearings to get it perfect. I decided to go a little larger than originally planned, vertical crosscut capacity is 5' and the length is 11'. Cutting thickness is limited to 1.5". I've got a few more odds and ends to finish up: installing the tape measure on my Kreg Trak length stop, also would like to install tape measure on the 80/20 rail for setting the width of rip.
The cut quality is much better then I expected, although I did step-up to the Makita track saw instead of a basic circular saw. My thought was the track saw is much nicer to plunge to my desired depth to make a score cut first (cutting backward) then plunge thru and make final cut. It actually crosscuts cuts veneer plywood with barely any chip-out on front side and that's without a score cut first... who would have thought. Pretty impressed with this Makita saw.
Today I spent time squaring the saw using the 5 cut method, which worked very nice. The fence pivots at the center point so I could make the fine adjustments needed then lock it in place. It ended up square to approx 1/64" over 48". I never had a need for a Feeler gauge set but that would have been helpful today. I used paper shims which took some time to get correct. The dust collection works well but could be better, a small amount of dust is laying on the fence after each cut. All dust from backside of cut drops into dust chamber and is sucked up.
Question for those with vertical panel saws: how often do you rip vs crosscut? I doubt I'll rip very often but was curious how others use their panel saws... Thanks
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