Slider question

[Aaron Inami]

I would not really recommend using the slider as a "work table". I have found that it is very easy to put dings/scratches in Felder aluminum slider. You should really only be putting wood onto the sliding table. Any sort of nails, clamps, tools will likely cause dings/scratches/marks on the slider. If you don't care about this, then great, but it is a concern.

[Jim Becker]

I would not really recommend using the slider as a "work table". I have found that it is very easy to put dings/scratches in Felder aluminum slider. You should really only be putting wood onto the sliding table. Any sort of nails, clamps, tools will likely cause dings/scratches/marks on the slider. If you don't care about this, then great, but it is a concern.

And yet, there have been a bunch of times when I've used my outrigger as a clamping table because it's very flat and open enough to allow for clamping material down to the crossmembers. The heavy powdercoat on my slider's outrigger never blinked from clamps nor does glue stay on it easily. Of course, all of my clamps have plastic or other soft surfaces on the business ends.

[Todd Zucker]

I got pricing on the K3 Comfort and B3 Comfort before thinking about the 48 x 48. I assume that would be equal or slightly less. I am going to put some painters tape down on the garage floor. Looks like the footprint when idle is 5 feet left to right and 6.5 feet front to back but in use would be about 8 feet wide and 16.5 feet for the sliding action. Erik, I think your earlier suggestion about driving to the showroom might be a good idea.

Aaron, I should have mentioned that I use the MFT for its track saw function and as a flat surface and was not intending to have the slider replace the workbench.

[Rod Sheridan]

Haha, no kidding Jacques. I took a fair number of “what does it cost to get the outrigger as an accessory” from existing owners. By the time we got the freight cost and lead time worked out, the customer was always like, “Umm… Let me get back to you”. Which is why I always encouraged folks to budget for it as part of the original build.

Erik

I’m probably one of the few people who added the outrigger a couple of years after buying the machine.

Fortunately I live in Toronto so there were no freight charges.

Regards, Rod

[Steve Jenkins]

Todd, if you come up to the Felder showroom they are very helpful. I have a slider although it’s not a Felder I’d be glad to give you some tips and time playing with it if you want. I’m about 45 minutes north of Felder outside of McKinney.

[Chris Parks]

I’m probably one of the few people who added the outrigger a couple of years after buying the machine.

Fortunately I live in Toronto so there were no freight charges.

Regards, Rod

I am also one of the few who added the outrigger after purchase and it cost the same price as it would have fitted by Felder from new. My saw will crosscut a full size panel and I have never needed more than that over the 11 years I have owned it. The one thing I never regret adding is the fine adjuster on the rip fence, adding a DRO to the rip fence combined with the fine adjuster is the icing on the cake. DRO's are under a $100 each now and I have recently also added one to the outrigger fence as well.

One advantage I have found buying the outrigger later is that I now have two crosscut fences that can be fitted to the sliding table one at each end and the advantage to that is they can both be set to the same dimension and a piece of 20** series extrusion then placed against both flip stops and used as a parallel fence or an angled guide as needed. Using a $100 DRO on each fence is an added winner and a cheap alternative to the very expensive alternatives available up to now. I would recommend this approach to anyone with a slider, buying another crosscut fence and a couple of cheap DRO's is a relatively inexpensive exercise on top of the machine cost.

[Jacques Gagnon]

Chris:

I went the other way around. I bought the Comfort configuration and added an additional fence + mount and ended up on the same place as you and Rod. Two fences, two flip stops.

Todd:

As I stated in an earlier post, I work in a small shop (single car garage - 14 x 20) and it was relatively easy to fit the 2080mm slider. By the way, if you decide to go ahead and choose the B3 you may wish to order the height gauge for the shaper (mm version) as you will find it very useful. You may already have one on your A3 and be tempted to use it on the shaper - it will work but will test your patience as the pitch is the same but the rotation of the dial is reversed. DAMHIK

[Chris Parks]

I am going to start a new thread to continue this discussion.