Craftsman table saw upgradeable?

[Frank Pratt]

I will go against the grain here. I went from a sears benchtop to a Delta contractor to a cabinet saw to a Delta saw with a Grizzly 1023RL with a riving knife. You are already thinking about a cabinet saw. It seems a waste to get a new fence, PALS, etc to fix it up only to wish you had a cabinet saw. That being said that is a screaming deal on that fence if it is the full blown Biesemeyer clone.

I agree. But is that fence a good one? I've noticed the last few years that there are lots of Bies clones out there that are pretty terrible with lots of flex. If it is a good one, then yes it is a great price.

[Roger Feeley]

Matt,

I classify table saws into just a few categories

Benchtop direct drive saw are mostly junk.

Contractor saws are better but have some problems. I had a Powermatic 63 saw with a nice Vega fence and a Delta Uniguard. But there were two big hassles. One was dust collection. The motor and pulley were suspended in back and there was an opening. The other was a big pain but not insurmountable. The trunion was attached to the table which made adjusting the blade parallel to the miter gauge tracks extremely difficult. This is common to contractor saws. I got mine tuned to .001" but it pretty much took a day. When I sold the saw, I told the guy how to adjust it and told him not to bump the saw getting it home. I never heard if it stayed in adjustment.

Cabinet saws solve the two problems above. The motor is enclosed in a cabinet and the trunion is attached to the cabinet, not the table. This makes adjusting parallelism a snap.

So to your question.
1. I would ask if the motor is enclosed. If it's in back, do what I did. Seal the bottom with a Hole for the DC. Then make wooden baffles that attach to the back of the saw with magnets. they are easy to remove when you cut a bevel and seal the cabinet well enough.
2. I would ask if the trunion is supported by the cabinet or by the table. This isn't a huge deal but you are going to want the blade parallel.
3. Check for runout with a dial indicator.

I don't have the PM63 anymore. It served me well but I sold it off for a SawStop ICS and have never looked back.

[Curt Harms]

I did sort of like Roger did, attached magnets to a couple pieces of ply to mostly enclose the back and made a base with dust collection. It was dumb luck when i made the pieces in the back that I didn't have very strong magnets. It's really easy when tilting the arbor to forget to remove the plywood pieces. Weak magnets mean the plywood pieces are simply pushed out of the way by the belt, no harm done.

I needed the saw to be portable so used what farmers call a gravity box as inspiration. A 3 piece bottom comes together at a door on the bottom of the flat side. I built a 2 X 4 frame and made plywood panels to form the sloped bottom and square back. I put a PVC stub where the door would be on a gravity box for dust collector connection. It worked out quite well. This is what I'm talking about.

http://www.jm-inc.com/gravity_wagon.php

I made my base square and put the square side/dust port in the back so the blade threw the dust toward the dust port. That fence looks a little like the Delta T square fence Home Depot sells

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Delta-Po...30T3/205803795

I did notice one detail I'd investigate. The rail looks a lot like my Mule Cab rail. It's simple and sturdy but it won't lift off the rail like the Bies and clones, it has to be slid off the end. This can be inconvenient, especially if you put a router table in a wing.