Ed Kowaski
09-14-2006, 5:11 PM
Given the current xxxxxx about format saws and the personal attack of honorable gentlemen and pro's, who IMO raise very valid questions and concerns, by the owner of Grizzly on the forum recently I feel compelled to tell my story. Unlike the Grizzly response, this isn't a story about nickels and fences on a saw other then the one being discussed. (which would actually mean something to me if the nickel was a dial indicator) It doesn't contain vague references to what unnamed unknown people think while avoiding and ignoring direct tech questions, avoiding any disclosure of production design or tolerances and in fact *avoiding any factual or measurable reference* to why this saw might be as good as or better then other format saw.
This is a story about one saw purchased from one dealer, it happened to me and these are the facts.
After being out of the industry for a number of years I'm back running a one man show.
In the interests of fully disclosure, at one time I ran a 22,000 sq/ft production shop with 17 employees. It was during that time I started dealing with Eurotech for some machine purchases and the relationship goes back some 20 years. They were great to work with and I purchased several machines from them at that time. I don't know the total but certainly over 100K. Not that much on the scale they operate on still it's not chicken feed.
We had a Altendorf F-45 with 12 foot slider and a big Holz-Her upright with scoring. They ran 8/5 for years. Both excellent saws.
That was then and this is now.
After some research to get back up to speed on current machines, in Feb of this year I purchased a MM WSC4 WS.
I now live in a very out of the way corner of a very sparsely populated area of the country. As luck would have it the SCMI/MM dealer for the western half of Canada are my old partners Eurotech based Calgary AB, which also hosts a huge woodworking industry. I'm told SCMI owns 15% of Eurotech. Eurotech has set up a network of satellite dealers to better serve their scattered and sparely populated sales area. I don't know of the terms and conditions of the arrangement. What it means to me is I get to see the machines at my nearest major center and I go there several times a year. I purchased the saw from a satellite dealers stock.
The saw was well made and a good fit for my needs. For example when checking the arbor and flange for runout I double and triple check that the indicator was contacting the machine because there was absolutely not movement. Zero zip zilch. A few things needed to be setup but that's par for the course. However the saw was not cutting as it should IMO. One tooth was raking the panel and leaving a line, it repeated in a somewhat regular pattern with the spacing dependent on the feed rate. You couldn't see it in particle board but in MDF and harder materials it was plainly visible and somewhat detectable with a finger nail.
The service tech from the satellite dealer made the 2.5 hour one way trip out here to look in to it. He's a sharp guy but a bit new to his current role. Anyway we played around with it and between that and a few calls to the head tech at Eurotech the conclusion was vibration and the most likely cause was the drive belts. They had seen this before. During the first visit some settings were knocked out of alignment. A second service call was arranged to install the belts and reset the machine from end to end. The belts didn't fix it and tech missed fully tightening up the rip fence bolts so that had to be redone, which I did. Probably mid march now and I've been using the saw all along. At this point through some mystery the blade was *slightly* off 90 to the table. I didn't notice it until I'd cut a pile of material and dry fit a cabinet. A quick call to Eurotech got the blade back to square and I sucked it up and recut what I had to.
The miter attachment didn't ship with the saw and was still not here.
Eurotech is in a bit of a spot now. They can fly a tech out here with a new motor or pick up the saw leave a new one. Through some comedy of errors and miss communication I still don't understand things sat like that for a couple of months. I'm getting kind of tired of this whole affair by this time and told the Arnie the GM at Eurotech that by now I didn't feel that fixing the saw was enough and suggested they think about how they could make it right. I'd lost some time and material, a couple of months had passed and nothing had been done. I'm still using the saw every day. Arnie called back in a couple hours and said he wanted and believed he could float replacing the WSC4 with a brand new S315 at no cost to me! I just about fell to the floor.
Doing this meant a 800 mile round trip for a for hire cherry picker equipt flat deck. There isn't a fork lift within 50 miles of where I live.
Arnie was true to his word. The 2005 WSC4 is gone and I have a brand new 2006 Technomax S315 in the shop
I can't imagine what kind of a bath they took on this. They were anxious to move the WSC4 and I purchased it at a very good price, two service calls that amount to 2 full days, an for hire cherry picker flat deck for at least a 800 mile round trip plus loading and unloading , the more then 2.5K difference in the price of the saws and a returned WSC4 that is now a used machine. Clearly they know that at this point I'm never going to buy enough equipment to recover much from me.
So that's my story, the facts as I know them. I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions and pick their own partners/suppliers.
Allow me now to digress to an opinion. I think the S315 is a wonderful machine. I'm extremely pleased and I'm a fuss old SOB who has owned and operated one of the "best" for more hours then I care to remember.
This is a story about one saw purchased from one dealer, it happened to me and these are the facts.
After being out of the industry for a number of years I'm back running a one man show.
In the interests of fully disclosure, at one time I ran a 22,000 sq/ft production shop with 17 employees. It was during that time I started dealing with Eurotech for some machine purchases and the relationship goes back some 20 years. They were great to work with and I purchased several machines from them at that time. I don't know the total but certainly over 100K. Not that much on the scale they operate on still it's not chicken feed.
We had a Altendorf F-45 with 12 foot slider and a big Holz-Her upright with scoring. They ran 8/5 for years. Both excellent saws.
That was then and this is now.
After some research to get back up to speed on current machines, in Feb of this year I purchased a MM WSC4 WS.
I now live in a very out of the way corner of a very sparsely populated area of the country. As luck would have it the SCMI/MM dealer for the western half of Canada are my old partners Eurotech based Calgary AB, which also hosts a huge woodworking industry. I'm told SCMI owns 15% of Eurotech. Eurotech has set up a network of satellite dealers to better serve their scattered and sparely populated sales area. I don't know of the terms and conditions of the arrangement. What it means to me is I get to see the machines at my nearest major center and I go there several times a year. I purchased the saw from a satellite dealers stock.
The saw was well made and a good fit for my needs. For example when checking the arbor and flange for runout I double and triple check that the indicator was contacting the machine because there was absolutely not movement. Zero zip zilch. A few things needed to be setup but that's par for the course. However the saw was not cutting as it should IMO. One tooth was raking the panel and leaving a line, it repeated in a somewhat regular pattern with the spacing dependent on the feed rate. You couldn't see it in particle board but in MDF and harder materials it was plainly visible and somewhat detectable with a finger nail.
The service tech from the satellite dealer made the 2.5 hour one way trip out here to look in to it. He's a sharp guy but a bit new to his current role. Anyway we played around with it and between that and a few calls to the head tech at Eurotech the conclusion was vibration and the most likely cause was the drive belts. They had seen this before. During the first visit some settings were knocked out of alignment. A second service call was arranged to install the belts and reset the machine from end to end. The belts didn't fix it and tech missed fully tightening up the rip fence bolts so that had to be redone, which I did. Probably mid march now and I've been using the saw all along. At this point through some mystery the blade was *slightly* off 90 to the table. I didn't notice it until I'd cut a pile of material and dry fit a cabinet. A quick call to Eurotech got the blade back to square and I sucked it up and recut what I had to.
The miter attachment didn't ship with the saw and was still not here.
Eurotech is in a bit of a spot now. They can fly a tech out here with a new motor or pick up the saw leave a new one. Through some comedy of errors and miss communication I still don't understand things sat like that for a couple of months. I'm getting kind of tired of this whole affair by this time and told the Arnie the GM at Eurotech that by now I didn't feel that fixing the saw was enough and suggested they think about how they could make it right. I'd lost some time and material, a couple of months had passed and nothing had been done. I'm still using the saw every day. Arnie called back in a couple hours and said he wanted and believed he could float replacing the WSC4 with a brand new S315 at no cost to me! I just about fell to the floor.
Doing this meant a 800 mile round trip for a for hire cherry picker equipt flat deck. There isn't a fork lift within 50 miles of where I live.
Arnie was true to his word. The 2005 WSC4 is gone and I have a brand new 2006 Technomax S315 in the shop
I can't imagine what kind of a bath they took on this. They were anxious to move the WSC4 and I purchased it at a very good price, two service calls that amount to 2 full days, an for hire cherry picker flat deck for at least a 800 mile round trip plus loading and unloading , the more then 2.5K difference in the price of the saws and a returned WSC4 that is now a used machine. Clearly they know that at this point I'm never going to buy enough equipment to recover much from me.
So that's my story, the facts as I know them. I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions and pick their own partners/suppliers.
Allow me now to digress to an opinion. I think the S315 is a wonderful machine. I'm extremely pleased and I'm a fuss old SOB who has owned and operated one of the "best" for more hours then I care to remember.