William Addison
02-04-2008, 5:24 PM
I took delivery of the saw last Thursday and after upgrading my power from 20 t0 30 Amps on Friday started assembling the saw Saturday. These are my initial impressions.
From order to delivery was only about four days which is excellent. The saw had somewhat disassembled itself during shipment and the footpedal and knob for the shroud on the lower door fell out on my driveway. The lower guides and foot pedal screws were loose in the lower compartment but were at least they were there.
Calling the documentation that came with the saw a manual is a kindness. It's worse than useless because I tried to use it to reinstall the lower guides and worked for at least an hour before deciding the manual had to be wrong-which it was. I normally like to look at the manual online when I am ordering a tool but Minimax doesn't have theirs posted, probably because they're ashamed of it. I suggested to them that they plagarize the Griz 636 manual because it's both online and good.
The fence was slightly out of square to the table which is important for resawing but the fix was easy. I took the fence off the base which clamps it to the rail and sanded the paint off and filed the burrs from around the two holes in it and all was fine.
Next problems(s) was the blade guard. That thing is an abomination, it's not painted and since I live on the South Gulf Coast of Texas in a subtropical climate, no matter what I do it's going to rust. I had to take it off the saw three times to get it to telescope properly and then I discovered it is cleverly designed to prevent the thrust bearing from getting closer than about 3/8 inch to the blade. Tech support said I'd need to notch the guard which I did ,but I'm not thrilled about paying that much money for a machine that needed so much work.
I had seen and used a MM16 that belongs to a friend but I really did think about the 636 and only the fact that I couldn't see one kept me from ordering it. If the Grizz saw is as much better than the MM16 as the manuals are, I likely made a mistake.
All that being said, the MiniMax is extremely powerful and a very nicely finished machine but it appears that they don't bother to do a final QC check.
From order to delivery was only about four days which is excellent. The saw had somewhat disassembled itself during shipment and the footpedal and knob for the shroud on the lower door fell out on my driveway. The lower guides and foot pedal screws were loose in the lower compartment but were at least they were there.
Calling the documentation that came with the saw a manual is a kindness. It's worse than useless because I tried to use it to reinstall the lower guides and worked for at least an hour before deciding the manual had to be wrong-which it was. I normally like to look at the manual online when I am ordering a tool but Minimax doesn't have theirs posted, probably because they're ashamed of it. I suggested to them that they plagarize the Griz 636 manual because it's both online and good.
The fence was slightly out of square to the table which is important for resawing but the fix was easy. I took the fence off the base which clamps it to the rail and sanded the paint off and filed the burrs from around the two holes in it and all was fine.
Next problems(s) was the blade guard. That thing is an abomination, it's not painted and since I live on the South Gulf Coast of Texas in a subtropical climate, no matter what I do it's going to rust. I had to take it off the saw three times to get it to telescope properly and then I discovered it is cleverly designed to prevent the thrust bearing from getting closer than about 3/8 inch to the blade. Tech support said I'd need to notch the guard which I did ,but I'm not thrilled about paying that much money for a machine that needed so much work.
I had seen and used a MM16 that belongs to a friend but I really did think about the 636 and only the fact that I couldn't see one kept me from ordering it. If the Grizz saw is as much better than the MM16 as the manuals are, I likely made a mistake.
All that being said, the MiniMax is extremely powerful and a very nicely finished machine but it appears that they don't bother to do a final QC check.