Grizzly G0588 \ G0591 \ G0493

[Justin Nelson]

I am in the market for a sliding tablesaw and your price on these caught my eye. But I am concerned about the quality of the sliding table. Obviously you guys build a very solid tablesaw (1023) but I was wondering how this unit compared to say a Minimax S315WS, in build and longevity.

Also if anyone else on the forum has an opinion on the Grizzly sliding table saw line please voice in.

Thanks,

Justin

[Peter M. Spirito]

I have had my 1023 for a year now with the sliding table and I just love it. I can cross cut 24 inches easily. It installed easily and adjusted dead acurate the first time. I am very very happy.:)

[Shiraz Balolia]

I am in the market for a sliding tablesaw and your price on these caught my eye. But I am concerned about the quality of the sliding table. Obviously you guys build a very solid tablesaw (1023) but I was wondering how this unit compared to say a Minimax S315WS, in build and longevity.

Also if anyone else on the forum has an opinion on the Grizzly sliding table saw line please voice in.

Thanks,

Justin

Justin - here are the answers to your questions:
1) The table on a sliding tablesaw is one of the most critical components, not just in function, but in itself. By that I mean that the long aluminum table has to be machined very accurately. Whenever you get into machining long lengths, the quality of the machining center that is doing all the "cutting and flattening" has to be extremely high. I personally was at the factory when they had just installed this huge Japanese machining center that you could drive a full size car inside its workbed area. For the first 4 days, at least 30 tables, each costing about $1000.00 in material, and on their final processing were scraped before the "bugs" were removed from the programming and the processing. Only 8 tables can be machined per day. These are all CNC machined, so once you got it down all subsequent units are good. I was told that the Aluminum Table blanks come from Japan because there are very few companies that can extrude such large pieces. Due to the nature and expense of these sliding tablesaws, extreme care is taken during quality control.

2) Regarding comparing to MiniMax, we prefer that you, as a customer, do your own research and then make up your mind. However, when we showed these machines at the AWFS show in Vegas last summer, many, many people came over several times to our booth and told us that "you are going to give Minimax a run for their money". They would come to our booth, go away for an hour or two and come back to check features or comments competitors were making about our machines. We sold a lot of sliders at the show!!

We will be at the IWF in Atlanta this August with a 5,000 sq ft booth. IWF is the largest woodworking show in the world and is held once every two years. Most of our sliders will be there. I strongly suggest you come check our machines out in person. That way you can go over to Minimax, Altendorf, Martin and other booths to check out their machines and make up your mind yourself. Alternatively, if you get a chance, do visit our PA or MO showrooms that have many of our sliding tablesaws on display (our WA showroom is the smallest of the three and has only one slider on display).

[Jim Becker]

Peter, the machines Justin is asking about are Euro-style sliders and a bit different than your setup with the 1023. Two of them are brand new products in the 2006 catalog.
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Justin, it's probably going to be hard to get opinions based on experience as Grizzly is new in this space. From the specifications, they seem like well equipped machines. The two smaller machines are lacking in slider capacity, IMHO, but that is not inconsistent with many machines in that size range. It appears they added a single-phase version of the larger one this iteration which may help with sales to the small pro and up-scale hobbiest who cannot or does not want to deal with 3 phase power.

Now, I'm a Mini Max fan, but Grizzly's more enthusiastic entry into this space should help the market awareness of and adoption of sliding saws as a valid option instead of the age-old American style cabinet saw. That's a good thing and they will also fill an important spot in the market that really hasn't been addressed by the Euro manufacturers...affordability.

[Paul B. Cresti]

Justin,
I am not going to touch this one, one bit ..... I might get banned ... ok well maybe a little;) ...... all I can say is time tested high quality design proven over years of use and abuse throughout all areas of the industry..... talk about cloning sheep! Looks can be very decieving .... I have climbed inside various machines in order to arrive where I am now. I sure would not want to find out the hard way unless you have 7k+ to lose. If you so happen to have money to spare why not spend a little bit more and just get one from a company that you know will perform no questions asked. I better stop now....

[Justin Nelson]

Gentlemen,

Thank you for all your replies so far. If there is anyone else with anymore information I would appreciate it.

Justin

[Dev Emch]

Justin - here are the answers to your questions:
1) The table on a sliding tablesaw is one of the most critical components, not just in function, but in itself. By that I mean that the long aluminum table has to be machined very accurately. Whenever you get into machining long lengths, the quality of the machining center that is doing all the "cutting and flattening" has to be extremely high. I personally was at the factory when they had just installed this huge Japanese machining center that you could drive a full size car inside its workbed area. For the first 4 days, at least 30 tables, each costing about $1000.00 in material, and on their final processing were scraped before the "bugs" were removed from the programming and the processing. Only 8 tables can be machined per day. These are all CNC machined, so once you got it down all subsequent units are good. I was told that the Aluminum Table blanks come from Japan because there are very few companies that can extrude such large pieces. Due to the nature and expense of these sliding tablesaws, extreme care is taken during quality control.

....



Come on Shiraz, something does not sit well with this paragraph. Are you telling us that your slider is made from an aluminum extrusion that costs $1000 dollars each? I hear what your saying but my gut is going Unc-Ahh, No Way! You could get meehanite blanks done for less than that.

Japanese machine center...hmmm, would that be a Mazak Nexus by any chance? Now that is a machine. I saw one hog an engine cylinder out of the solid in 25 seconds. The chips and coolant were flying out with such violence that it sounded like a hail storm in a tin shack. This was 3 inches in diameter and 10 inches deep in 4140 fully aneal chrome molly. Kewwwl as get out!:D Gotta love those ISCAR tools and Velocite Valcool coolant. Surface finish was too perfect and needed honeing afterwards to reestablhish the hashing pattern for oil flow. I can just imagine what it can do with aluminum which cuts like but-tah. You can really bump up your feeds and speeds with the beer can alloy.:D

In the old days, we used to use metal planers for this task. The machine work with these monsters is cake and its dead on accurate. This is esp. true of long straight castings like engine lathe bed ways. And you do multiple castings at a time. Hendy had a cinci planer that had twin overhead klapper boxes with twin side cutting klapper boxes. They would machine the bed ways on no less than SIX (6) engine lathe bed castings concurrently! Three rows of two abreast.

Hoffman has a really old bridged planer. I think it may be of English origin or possibly an american Gray but I am not sure. Just know its old. At full production capacity, they can do four machines per day. By machine, I mean either the shaper table or the jointer tables or the planer table. Smaller tables like the shaper slider is usually ganged and they will make about 20 sliding table tables in one run. Planer tables can also be ganged because they are not that long. The hardest tables to do are jointer tables because of their length. Its hard to fit both infeed and outfeed tables for two jointers onto the planer bed in one pass.

For the record, planers handle very long aluminum work like but-tah. Cake Icing! My larger planer (actually tiny by planer standards) is a 14,000 pound Rockford 72 inch Hydraulic Planer-SHaper with a hyrdaulic Kopy-Kat head. It was actually used to restore President Kennedy's Air Force One for the Air Force One plane collection. Now if you guys are thinking that the only place he could have snaged this monster is from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, you would be 100 percent correct. I missed out on the biggie. There was a rockford planer there that took THREE semis to rig out. This thing could machine a entire 707 wing spar replacement in about one day. That is the MAC spar section running from the wing root box to the tip. So you needed two of these guys.

So as you can see, doing Al (beer can alloy) is supper easy and fast. And that shiny finish is to die for. To bad aluminum is a very soft metal and not as durable as cast iron.

[Dev Emch]

I would like to know about the slider's bearings and bearing ways. What kind of balls does it take to move that table back and forth?

[tod evans]

I am in the market for a sliding tablesaw and your price on these caught my eye. But I am concerned about the quality of the sliding table. Obviously you guys build a very solid tablesaw (1023) but I was wondering how this unit compared to say a Minimax S315WS, in build and longevity.

Also if anyone else on the forum has an opinion on the Grizzly sliding table saw line please voice in.

Thanks,

Justin

justin, i believe the only correct answer to your question is that no-one knows how they compare longevity wise because the griz saws are new players in this type of saw. doing a quick "net" price comparison the griz comes in at 5700 without blades the mm comes in at 8600 set-up...a substantial price difference eh? each company has their respective track record and only you can decide whether or not that will play a part in your decision. i just spent 10 min. on each website looking at the respective parts manuals i would strongly suggest you do the same. in fact since you are the one who will be cutting a check i`d suggest downloading the parts manuals and studying them carefully. look at not only slider construction but blade adjustments,trunion design and electrical schematics. then if you`re able go and drive the saws you`re looking at before you make a decision...........oh-yeah i did the same thing a few years back only griz just offered the 10ft slider, i went with the mm and have no regrets...02 tod

[Shiraz Balolia]

Come on Shiraz, something does not sit well with this paragraph. Are you telling us that your slider is made from an aluminum extrusion that costs $1000 dollars each? I hear what your saying but my gut is going Unc-Ahh, No Way! You could get meehanite blanks done for less than that.


Have you any idea how long those extrusions are? They are about 10' long, 15" wide and about 3" to 4" thick and are extruded. Yes, actually they are more expensive than cast iron, plus nobody in their right mind would use cast iron on a sliding tablesaw of that type!!

[Paul B. Cresti]

So do tell us what kind of real trunion do you have on those saws??? Is their any at all? How long did it take you to develop those saws? Why do they look so similiar to saws that have been around for years??

[Clint Malone]

Well, it may be worth a couple of $200 plane rides to go test drive them both before committing to buying a $9000 saw.

[Marcus Ward]

So do tell us what kind of real trunion do you have on those saws??? Is their any at all? How long did it take you to develop those saws? Why do they look so similiar to saws that have been around for years??

Convergent evolution. Not everything is a conspiracy. Relax. Down boy.

[Jim Becker]

Well, it may be worth a couple of $200 plane rides to go test drive them both before committing to buying a $9000 saw.
Indeed. If there is no place local to fondle what you are interested in (owner or company site), investing a little time and money into real research isn't a horrible idea, especially if you are on the fence on anything; specific machine, additional features, etc. When cars could be bought for under $10K, we all still did a test drive. ;) (Sometimes that's all we did...LOL! )

[Peter M. Spirito]

The car dealers would let you take a new car home for the weekend. :D