I never said anything about the tracks sliding or not sliding, but now that you bring it up, that has been a complaint since day 1. 1/2 of them fall out when folding the table and 1/2 of them are very tight.
Matt, I bring it up to inform others...
It can be easily sanded, screwed, cut and crimped.
The good thing about good plastic ( This one is Virgin ABS)
is that haves memory and it can take the abuse.
After 5 years and thousands of STK's we have no one return yet.
What I don't like is that when I set a piece of plywood on top to make a flat work table, it slides around. There's very little contact area between that piece of plywood and the arms, which is nice when cutting up plywood, bad when you are trying to do other work on top. If I clamp the plywood to the rails, then I've got clamps sticking up.
For other than cutting plywood work, You can remove the tracks?
Or, you can make another "Drop in" top?
Few ways to solve the "problem" for other work.
The main problem that the tool was design to solve was supporting large panels and eliminate the binding that results in kickbacks.
And yes, it sagged, we've discussed that before. I added a reinforcing beam but that made it pretty heavy and I've always planned to start over on the design of the table itself. As Peter suggested, the smart top as an auxillary top would work great. Or I can build one of the multitude of cutting grids from scrap plywood.
Few 1x4's can do the job. You don't need a beam.
I always believe that the best tools are the ones made by the user.
Post some pictures of your cutting grids. I like pictures.
The smart table doesn't meet my needs, plain and simple. I found that use the table more for non cutting purposes than cutting. I've probably only cut 30-40 sheets of plywood on it and 20-some of those were in the past 2 months. I need a heavy duty but portable work table that I can set something on top of for cutting when I need to break down a sheet of plywood. Those uses are probably part of the reason the legs on mine have started bending. Mine are also US-made BTW. But I spent 12 years in Catholic school and moved a lot of bingo tables. They all had bent legs.
I was worrying that our heavy duty legs started to going bad.
I have few tables and we use it for many-many different jobs.
I replaced the tops on two of them ( to many holes)
Actually, I just put a new top over the old ones. ( save on time and much stronger. I don't need the portability.
I contacted your company about replacement tracks because I was trying to decide whether to fix this table, or go a different route. Since it doesn't meet my needs and needs a complete overhaul, why sink more money than I already have into it? The "old" MFT is on clearance for $300, BTW.
Good idea. My price for the MFT come from the MFT-3.
My bad. At the $300.00 I may buy one.
The only problem is that I don't have an extra inch to spare.
Always running out of space.
Anyway, back to my original post. Today I went to Costco to pick up something and wandered through the tool aisle. They have the
Vika Twofold work table/scaffold for $59.97. Its a "deleted item" which means when they're gone, they're gone. Its very sturdy, maybe moreso than my friend's MFT. Its got a somewhat smaller work surface, but the scaffold use will come in handy as well so I bought one. It gets decent reviews from what I can tell. I think I'm going to take off the 1/2" MDF top and replace that with 3/4" and cover over the area with the cheesy plastic tray too. I like the built-in power strip idea too. We'll see how that works in practice. It folds into a nice compact package and even has carrying handles. I really have no need for the guide capabilities of the MFT, and was thinking about a "basic" that didn't include them anyway.