Sliding Panel Saw Brands. New or Used?

[Terry Teadtke]

I’m starting to seriously look at sliding panel saws and trying to figure out the best bang for the buck but I absolutely have to have dead on accuracy. I will be using it mainly for cutting down 4 x 8 plywood sheets on a daily basis and a dado must work with the machine (for all I know they all accept dados). I would also like to stay at 10K and under.

It looks like I can get a new Grizzly or Laguna for under 10k but searching at the X-Factory web site brands like Robland, Altendorf, Powermatic, and SCMI seem to be prevalent with many machines under 10K and many look like much better machines than the new Grizzly or Laguna . Any used machine I would consider would have to be less than 10 years old.

Except for one new Grizzly model it looks like the rest are 3 phase machines which means I’ll have to spend another 1,000-1,500 for a phase converter. Any ideas which would be the best way to go? Are any of the used machines brands better than another? For some reason the SEMI 300 series looks interesting.

Thanks,

Terry

[george wilson]

Get a VFD,it will be much cheaper.

[Terry Teadtke]

What's a VFD?

Terry

[Rick Fisher]

The fear in buying used is if the track is worn. Repairing them is outragous.

If I where buying one, I would get a Felder. The X-Roll system seems far superior. They are available in single phase or 3 phase. A Felder Slider can be had for $10k but its entry level.

Look at the blade system in Felder, it seems to use two holes in the blade which may irritate you. I am not sure.

SCMI has a line called Technomax which are also available in single phase. I dont like SCMI... period.

Altendorf is the Caddilac slider. (as is Martin). If you can be sure its got lots of life left in the slider, it would be a great saw.

I would not buy a Chinese slider unless I had used it and spent some time making sure. If you start to have problems with one, you could always have problems with it.

[Rick Fisher]

What's a VFD?

Terry

A VFD is used to transfer single phase power into 3 phase power. It can also add soft start and variable speed.

For 3hp and under, they are super cheap. Over 3hp they start to really get expensive. They are technology, and over time, they will continue to fall in price..

Many larger sliders are 9hp. At that point, an RPC (rotary phase converter) could be comparable to a VFD.
An RPC doesnt offer the bells and whistles but can be used to run lots of different tools. A VFD is exclusive to the tool its running.

Do loads of research on this type of purchase. Investigate the companies as well as the tools. EG. The Felder 500 uses concrete (or they did) as a ballast. It wouldnt bother me but I wouldnt want to find out after. I find SCMI horrid to deal with in my area.. This would stop me from buying from them... It may be different in your area?

Some companies will try to force you to pay $1500 to have it set up. You need to know this before you have paid a deposit.

Griggio makes a decent slider. Laguna may sell it .. I dont know. In the USA Mini Max sells sliders which are called Technomax in Canada..

[Steve Rozmiarek]

A couple other Felder brands that use the X-roll slider, at least as an option, are Hammer and Format.

I think you will be very happy with a good sliders accuracy, and they will do exactly what you are thinking of. Good luck!

[Karl Brogger]

As far as I'm concerned there is only two brands of panel saw. Striebig, and Holz-Her. The rest are just a disapointment after those two.

But we all know what opinions are like.

[Rick Fisher]

I was of the impression that Hammer didnt use the X-Roll system. I could be wrong of course.

It may be worth looking into.

A person can sit on the track of a fully extended Felder 500. Another person can push them all the way back to the saw with one finger.

Its pretty impressive.

[Terry Teadtke]

Thanks for mentioning Felder Rick. I looked at the web site and the machines look nice. Might even be able to get a used one at that.

[Brian Ross]

I purchased a used SCMI 350 N a year ago and I am one happy puppy. I run it on a Rotary Phase converter and your estimate on the price of a rotary is quite close. My Rotary is an American Rotary out of the Milwaukee area. Good product with excellent service. My saw is 6 years old and unbelieveable for accuracy. I paid $8900 USD and I paid another $900 Cdn to the SCM dealer to have them set it up. It was worth every penny. They are not your usual cabinet saw and accessories are expensive. A miter guage is $900 but again is probably worth it.The SCM rep set the fence for square and it is still dead on. I could have bought a new Mini Max or Nova series saw for what I paid for mine but there is no comparison. This saw sold for approx $17000 new. The price of used sliders seems to have dropped since I bought mine as a lot of the bigger shops are switching over to CNC equipment and the sliders get used less. Excellent for sheet goods. I had looked at Robland but service is not available in my area and they do not seem that popular. I have seen used WA 8 Altendorfs for IIRC in the $8900 used and they have only been around for 4 or 5 years. They are assembled in China now but the early one were assembled in Germany. I am slowly accepting that being Chinese does not necessarily mean poor quality

Brian

[Thomas S Stockton]

There are lots of real good brands of sliding panel saws the two most common brands in commercial shops are Martin and Altendorf you might be able to find a used one for under 10k especially in todays economy. Seems like over on the Yahoo felder forum a lot of people lust after Martin equipment as being some of the best.
If buying used I would look at the shop it is coming out of. A saw from a one or two person cabinetshop is probably going to be in better shape than one out of a large shop.
I find that the prices on the x-factory web site a fairly overpriced compared to what equipment goes for in the real world a better site is www.woodweb.com although exfactory is a good place to see the wide variety of stuff out there.
I wouldn't worry about a brand I've never heard of but I would research what kind of support that is available for it, you should also do this for the popular ones, just because everbody loves a company it doesn't mean that they can get parts for a 10 year old machine and parts for some of these saws are very expensive.
I have a Rojek that has a 6' slider it's okay and was inexpensive when I got it but I proably wouldn't buy another one.
Tom

[Thomas S Stockton]

Both Martin and some Scmi machines use concrete ballast. I believe that Martin started doing it first. My old shop mate had a felder it was OK but didn't like to keep its settings and had a kinda cheap tinny feel to some parts of it, he has since replaced it with an Altendorf which he says is much nicer. The Felder was not the current model but was probably bought 15 years ago. That said the Felder would have probably been fine in a one or two man shop but it couldn't stand up to 5 people very well.
Tom

[Rick Fisher]

At our local Felder dealer, there is an older green Felder K-700 for sale. Its sitting amongst some newer 500's and 700's.

The newer ones are far.. far superior.

[Todd Solomon]

At that price point, you can get a new loaded Felder 700 Series, which has been recently redesigned with a more robust trunnion and other refinements. I've had a Felder K700S Plus for about 5 or 6 years now, and cannot say enough about the quality, accuracy and durability of this machine. Some of the high-end Mini Max machines are also in your price range, and are fine machines as well. I would not recommend the Grizzly sliders for daily commerical duty. I don't feel that their crosscut fence and flip-stop system is very accurate, I looked at them in detail at the AWFS show in Vegas. I'm not a fan of Laguna organization, although they make a nice band saw.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I was of the impression that Hammer didnt use the X-Roll system. I could be wrong of course.

It may be worth looking into.

A person can sit on the track of a fully extended Felder 500. Another person can push them all the way back to the saw with one finger.

Its pretty impressive.


No Rick, I think I was wrong. I just looked at the Felder site again, and I thought I had seen a Hammer with the X-roll there. Now I cant find it, but I did find a 500 series with it. Due to the vague color similarities, I think that's what I was thinking of.

Scratch the Hammer off the X-roll list. Speaking of riding the slider, have you seen the video of Sep riding his? It's on the Felder sight. It's a long video, but worth the download time. About spilled my coffee the first time I saw that!

What you said about the changes on the new Felder series over the last are very true. I looked at a 2000ish model 700 series when I was buying mine, and practically everything is changed. I think the older ones are probably good machines too, but, I'm glad there is a new one sitting in my shop:D

[Joe Jensen]

I have a 3 car suburban garage as my workshop. I currently have a 14" Dewalt RAS with benches as a dedicated 90 degree cutoff station along one side wall. The other has my compressor, jointer, and tool box. I have been keeping room to park one car in the garage when I'm not working.

I have 16 feet from the garage doors to the a concrete step up that is 3" high and runs with 30 foot width of the garage.

How much clear area does a slider that can rip an 8 foot plywood panel need? I think I need 8 feet on the front, rear, and left side of the blade?

Do you guys with sliders have them in garage shops, or are they too small?

[keith ouellette]

I had a robland x-31 with a sliding table. the table was terrible on mine. would not stay paralelle with the blade and couldn't get it in the same plane as the main table.

I think the x-31 was one of their lower end models though and it was a combination machine. I think you are talking about a table saw so it would be different. Robland was owned by laguna at the time.

[Brad Shipton]

Altendorf, Martin and several other euro machines dont accept a Dado. The dado is not all that common in europe as I understand from a recent disc on FWW. You can find jointing blades (square tips) up to 10mm, but I am not certain the max that fits most of those machines. The euro machines do not have the same arbor setup as NA saws, so you cannot simply use a NA dado stack.

Felder does offer a dado setup for there machines and I believe the Mini-max machines can be equipped the same. To comply with EU safety standards, they use a Shaper cutter for the dado instead of the NA stacked sets. The shaper cutter makes perfect cuts, but beware, the Felder version is around $700 to do 3/4" dados. I know many Felder owners have had their NA dado stacks bored to fit a Felder.

Have you checked the Woodweb exchange area? Lots of great deals given the state of the economy. There have even been a few Martins pop up recently.

Keep in mind the prices listed on the Ex-factory are "sticker shock" prices. Most negotiate lower prices.

Brad

[Joe Jensen]

Keep in mind the prices listed on the Ex-factory are "sticker shock" prices. Most negotiate lower prices.

Brad

Yes, the prices on Ex-Factory are very high. They do consignment and auction. When I listed my PM141 bandsaw I said I wanted $600 and they listed it for over $1000. I'm not sure what their cut is, but it could be 30-50%. They called several times to ask if I would take less and they implied that they would also reduce their cut to meet the customers offer.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I have a 3 car suburban garage as my workshop. I currently have a 14" Dewalt RAS with benches as a dedicated 90 degree cutoff station along one side wall. The other has my compressor, jointer, and tool box. I have been keeping room to park one car in the garage when I'm not working.

I have 16 feet from the garage doors to the a concrete step up that is 3" high and runs with 30 foot width of the garage.

How much clear area does a slider that can rip an 8 foot plywood panel need? I think I need 8 feet on the front, rear, and left side of the blade?

Do you guys with sliders have them in garage shops, or are they too small?


Mine has an 8' plus a little slider and I have it set up in a 22x24 garage. I have a bunch of other stuff as well, but it fits OK. It has to be angled to fit. Check out my page here, there is an older photo of when I was setting it up. The actual poition has changed a little, as has the position of a few of the other tools. I can us it to the full extent of its range as it is now. I can crosscut or rip to any size a full sheet of 4x8 ply. I can crosscut up to 12" boards by 12' or so.

[Terry Teadtke]

I agree the prices at X Factory are real high from what I've seen elsewhere and probably wouldn't purchase from them unless I saw a real deal. They do have a big selection of different brands and years which makes it easier to compare saws. Felder has peaked my interest I will continue to look more closely at what they have.

Terry

[Todd Solomon]

Regarding dados, both Mini Max and Felder now offer dado capability on their new sliders.

In the case of Felder, you have a couple of choices:
-The Felder insert dado head. Pricey, but outstanding. This is what I have.
-Forrest Dado now can be ordered from Forrest with the 3-hole Felder pattern (along with their other blades). Less expensive than the Felder, but I doubt there is any compromise in cut quality, if it's anything like my other Forrest blades.

For the Mini Max, you can just order a dado set for the arbor size that your machine was equipped with.

[Paul B. Cresti]

Terry,
Here is an idea I came up with in using my slider as a dado machine without changing the main blade. I do not like to tie up my slider with blade changes because I use it for so many different functions. If I am cutting sheetgoods I simple bring up the scorer...if solid stock I only use the main blade (there even have been times when i did use the the scorer for solid stock) I rarely ever change my main blade and use the Prasiza combo blade all the time.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=28088

As far as brands there are so many in that 10k price ceiling that would fit your needs. I would look at all of them to get a flavor of what you want before you make a decision...that means saws from Italy, Austria, Germany and even the Czech Republic.

[Andy Pratt]

Terry,

I'm not extremely knowledgeable about this, but I have heard that certain add-on slider attachments (exactor especially) are dead on accurate once set up. This would allow you to buy the saw of your choice and add this on after market.

Probably not worth it unless you wanted unique features (sawstop maybe) that you couldn't get elsewhere, but I wanted to put the option out there.

My understanding is that some purpose built sliders let you stow the table so it's not so cumbersome, and I imagine not being able to do this would be a major negative of the option I mentioned.

Andy

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Terry,

I'm not extremely knowledgeable about this, but I have heard that certain add-on slider attachments (exactor especially) are dead on accurate once set up. This would allow you to buy the saw of your choice and add this on after market.

Probably not worth it unless you wanted unique features (sawstop maybe) that you couldn't get elsewhere, but I wanted to put the option out there.

My understanding is that some purpose built sliders let you stow the table so it's not so cumbersome, and I imagine not being able to do this would be a major negative of the option I mentioned.

Andy

Andy, I don't know anything about the add-ons either, but I can't see how an attactment cound be added to an existing tablesaw to make it function with the benefits of a true slider. The stock either is not supported all the way to the blade, or if it is, blade height is lost because of the addon slider mechanism.

The Euro sliders also go to pretty substantial lengths to get stability built into the machine, see the above remarks about the concrete in the bases of certain saws for example, and the stability of a conventional cabinet type saw may be severely compromised buy a table add on.

I'm not saying that these are useless, or a bad idea, but a Euro slider they are not. They just have some limitations that as far as I'm aware of, no one has figured out a good work around for. It's all about compromises, as always.

As I said before, I have no first hand knowlege of any of the add ons, so take that for what it's worth.

[Larry Edgerton]

I have a adapter for my old SCMI that threads on to the arbor, and the dado blade is bored out to fit, along with a different washer. The inside of the arbor is bored and threaded and a bolt going inside the arbor hold the whole thing together. Sounds a lot more complicated than it is, and it works just fine. Actually I like it better because I can remove the adapter with the dado stack still on it and store it ready to slip back on in one piece.

[Terry Teadtke]

Thanks Andy,

I was lead to the siding table saw decision by originally thinking about adding an attachment to my Saw Stop. Jet has a nice one, as is the Excalibur, but the more I looked into it and considered the amount, size, and surface of the sheet goods I'll be using in my furniture, a true sliding table saw seem the logical route to go. The more I look at how a sliding table saw works the more I like the concept and the elimination of tear out with the scoreing blade.

Right now the Felder and Mini Max are at the top of my list for new machines though the Grizzly is pretty tempting with what it has to offer in the same price range. And a couple of machines including the Felder can be order with single phase eliminating the cost of a phase converter (a single phase saw may even have a better resale value if I decide I need to upgrade in the future, I don't know and it doesn't have anything to do with whatever decision I make saw wise). Since I will be all but exclusively cutting down plywood, single phase should give me more than enough power. My main concern is I want an accurate saw that once set up will cut exact 90's, 45's and so on without having to fool around with it constantly. That's one of the reasons I have all but decided against a used machine unless it's a very late model with a good reputation.

Terry

[Rick Potter]

I have a Felder KF 700 that is about six years old. It does NOT take a dado. Some newer Felders take dado's but only their own (cha-ching), and only up to a certain width. You will have to check with newer owners about that.

I do dado's with a sliding table on my Unisaw, which I kept.

Rick Potter

[Jim Becker]

I'm absolutely happy with my MiniMax S315WS slider. Available in single phase, too...which mine is. My machine will also take a dado set, but I found I was no longer using it and sold the set to another 'Creeker not long ago. I've switched to using a router, either in my table or on a Festool rail for that purpose going forward.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Jim isn't the only one who doesn't dado with his saw I'm guessing, and another thing that Euro sliders can offer is the integration of a shaper that can be used in conjunction with the sliding table. Felder, and I suppose others, have a quick change spindle system that allows a high speed router chuck if you are so inclined, that would sure make dados well. I don't use mine that way, but the sliding table sure makes making cabinet doors a breeze.

[Rick Fisher]

I went to the Felder grand opening in a town an hour south.

At that event, they had a tech guy from Austria present, wandering around, answering questions.

The fella told me a 10' slider needed a space 12' wide x 20' long. He is the one who sat on the slider and let us push him back and forth with one finger.

This guy knew absolutely everything and more than I could ever ask. I had a problem with my Felder DC and asked him, he almost told me the solution before I finished the complaint.

He demonstrated the Felder 900 automated saw with the TV screen.. lol.. I was suitably impressed.

After spending 30 minutes with this guy (I showed up when nobody was there), I was sold. The only reason I dont have one is the 12' x 20' space problem. .. whew..

When you order one new, you can get a Felder 500 but upgrade the carriage to that of the Felder 700. The scoring unit on the 500 ( if I remember) is driven off the main motor? The 700 and up have dedicated motors.

You really need to spend an hour with an expert from each lineage and get a head full of information.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Was that Sep (sp?) that was there? Good video if it was. I learned that I'd been saying mortiser wrong for the last 20 years by watching him build a desk...:D

[Paul B. Cresti]

I went to the Felder grand opening in a town an hour south.

At that event, they had a tech guy from Austria present, wandering around, answering questions.

The fella told me a 10' slider needed a space 12' wide x 20' long. He is the one who sat on the slider and let us push him back and forth with one finger.

This guy knew absolutely everything and more than I could ever ask. I had a problem with my Felder DC and asked him, he almost told me the solution before I finished the complaint.

He demonstrated the Felder 900 automated saw with the TV screen.. lol.. I was suitably impressed.

After spending 30 minutes with this guy (I showed up when nobody was there), I was sold. The only reason I dont have one is the 12' x 20' space problem. .. whew..

When you order one new, you can get a Felder 500 but upgrade the carriage to that of the Felder 700. The scoring unit on the 500 ( if I remember) is driven off the main motor? The 700 and up have dedicated motors.

You really need to spend an hour with an expert from each lineage and get a head full of information.

Now Rick I know we have a difference in opinion of which brand is best ;) but I have a 10.5 ft slider in a much more confined area and it works. Yes I do not have full access to the operators position side but I can work 4x8 sheet goods just fine. I have used 4 x10 also when the need arrises but ripping the 10ft direction with a 4ft width does not work in my case. I have quickly become a master of getting oversized machines in a small footprint and still being bale to use them. My shop is only 25x25 but I can open the overhead door to complete a rip over 8ft when needed.

[Phil Ashley]

Gentlemen I work for EX-FACTORY, as the operations manager, and I want to let you know, Tim Barnes in our office has just undertaken an effort of reducing the pricing on the majority of our sliding panel saws.

The pricing for sliding panel saws has come down tremendously in the last 2 years. We are working with sellers of the saws to realize this and get the pricing of used machines under control

We appreciate the feedback this thread has provided.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Gentlemen I work for EX-FACTORY, as the operations manager, and I want to let you know, Tim Barnes in our office has just undertaken an effort of reducing the pricing on the majority of our sliding panel saws.

The pricing for sliding panel saws has come down tremendously in the last 2 years. We are working with sellers of the saws to realize this and get the pricing of used machines under control

We appreciate the feedback this thread has provided.

Very interesting, thanks for the update!