Hi guys,
First time posting as you can tell, I've been lurking for a little while and now I need some advice and wanted to share the experience I've been having with Grizzly.
It was time for me to get a bandsaw, and after doing quite a bit of research I decided that the Grizzly G0555LX best fit what I wanted to spend at the moment while still looking like a solid performer for my current hobbyist level. So, towards the beginning of May, I traveled down to Grizzly in Muncy (I'm about 2 hours away) and picked up the saw in the showroom.
Got the saw home, and right off the bat started noticing some issues. First of all, the Grizzly logo on the front was installed upside down. Yeah, not a huge issue by any means, it took me about 30 seconds to unscrew it and flip it over, but it shouldn't have gone out that way. I also noticed a pretty big scratch in the paint on the edge of the table. I decided it wasn't a huge deal and finished up assembling the saw.
Here's where I started running into more issues. As I tried adjusting the blade tracking I could just not get it to track consistently, and found out that the upper wheel had a lot of movement in it even under tension. I found that one of the set screws for adjusting the wheel laterally had stripped out and was allowing the bracket that the upper wheel mounts on to flop around inside the tensioning assembly.
I called Grizzly on Monday morning (bought the saw on a Friday so I had to wait through the weekend) and they sent me a replacement tensioner assembly. They didn't have any in stock in PA so it shipped from WA and arrived on Thursday. So I got that installed and was able to run the saw finally. Long story short, blade wandered all over the place, saw had a moderate amount of vibration. So I rush shipped a Timberwolf blade thinking it was the cheap stock blade and the also cheap Grizzly one I bought when I picked up the saw, and it had the same issues. Spent an hour on the phone with Grizzly and we determined the upper wheel was out of balance. The person I was talking with told me he was going to send me another wheel, but I told him I did not want to keep messing around with replacing parts in case that wasn't the only issue and asked instead to just return it for another.
So after doing some more research and finding that people were saying that some of the cheaper Grizzly stuff could be hit or miss, I thought I would stretch my budget and go for the G0513 instead of another of the G0555LX.
Well, I made the mistake of bringing my wife with me on this trip back to Muncy so you can imagine how that went. With her persuasion, as well as the fact that the tech who checked the saw when I returned it said he had never seen a wheel out of balance like that before, I decided to stick with the G0555LX, thinking I had just gotten a lemon. I decided to pick up the riser block this time too.
I got the new saw home and unpacked it as little as possible to check all the major things before diving into assembly (did this this past Saturday night). I checked the upper wheel first, that was fine this time, then I checked the set screws on the back of the tensioner, and they were completely missing the nuts that are used for adjustment! A little frustrated, I figured it would be easy enough just to grab a couple at the hardware and take care of that myself, although I was still planning on giving Grizzly a call this week to complain.
I just got around to getting the saw together this afternoon, and more issues popped up.
Paint peeling off the table again
The set screw that holds the wheel for adjusting the blade guide height is missing so the wheel fell of on the floor.
The cord that runs from the switch to the motor was crushed between the motor and the body of the saw during assembly, I had to loosen the motor mounts to get it out and I'm not sure if the wires in it are damaged.
I'm not sure if something is bent, but I'm barely able to set the upper blade guides back far enough that the clear with the 3/8 blade that came with it. I don't know how it would be possible to use a smaller blade as the teeth would hit the guides.
BTW I ended up finding the two nuts that were missing in two different parts of the box, looked like they were thrown in there. No such luck with the missing set screw.
Overall the saw just runs fair at best, and I'm not even sure if I should run it now, as when I first ran it I hadn't noticed the pinched cord yet.
So if you've made it this far, here's where I could use some help. This saw is definitely going back and I don't care to try for a third. This whole Grizzly experience has led me to stay away from them, so I was looking at going to the Laguna 14-12. But, part of me is still wondering if the G0513 would fair better than the G0555LX. I don't know if it was just this one model that hasproblems, and I would be better to stick with Grizzly, or if there overall quality control is lacking. I have heard of a few people having some issues with the Laguna as well though, and I've heard that with all the foreign made saws a bad one tends to pop up every once in a while. So I'd just like to figure out figure out what would be best to try to avoid this very frustrating experience again.
So my real question is: does anybody have any experience with how the quality control differs over the different Grizzly lines, or had an experience getting multiple bum tools like this?
Thanks for listening to my sob story guys, and for tolerating another bandsaw thread.