Gregor & Alex , your view is often voiced by many who have no clue what it's like to run a manufacturing business, or young uns who have grown up in the Information Age where everything is point, click and deliver tomorrow.   I'm not picking on you.

Alex beat me to an answer with

No, it's not that it can't be done, it's that they can't be bothered because the margin's too low. And thanks for the "no clue" comment. You're always here to bring a shining light to everybody's day.

but some remarks anyway:

I'm fine with someone (or some company) telling me that they simply won't do something, even without giving a reason or when explicitely stating that they're just not interested as it would be an additional effort (however small) - even lazyness as a reason is acceptable, as it's an honest answer.

Simply don't want to do it for whatever reason? Fine.
It'll be more difficult to do custom stuff compared to off-the-shelf? Certainly.
The bespoke product might take longer to be delivered and possibly be more expensive? Reasonable.
Significant added complexity in carrying an additional dimension parameter in an order? Su... wait, what? In 2017?

I'm also fresh out of kind things to say to people which pull ad hominem, especially without having a clue about me as a person... Thanks @Alex for wording it politely.

antss, I'm sure you know this so but for others that may not the holes are punched not drilled.

Punched because they are slightly oblong, not round.

Since it is going to be made in USA (no more import tariff, high shipping cost) ,I just wondering if the price will go down?

Keep dreaming. We are already getting killed with the Euro costing $1.15 USD. When you Euro went into a free fall a few years ago ($1.60+ to close to a dollar) Festool still kept increasing prices, which makes buying stuff in Europe and having it shipped here cheaper than buying it here. With an order a few $100 the savings can be substantial even after shipping is accounted for.

80/20 extrudes and anodizes in house. You can order anything cut to the mm and pay by the inch (ex. for a piece 26mm you pay for 2 inches). Being custom cut the delivery time ranges from 1 to 2 weeks in my experience.

You can also order the stuff from any of 80/20's dealers but it is still cut by and ships from 80/20.

For a custom length guide rail they could just use a fill-in-the-blank product label and use the next larger size box to ship.

Of course we can already buy a guide rail and cut it down...

Maybe cut 2 rails at 45 degrees and weld them together. Then cut or mill the places where the saw glides

and hopefully one can square up sheet goods with 2 set ups.......

Just thinking.

I am so glad Festool spent the time, money, and resources on this US guide rail production line.  FOGers and potential Festool customers have been asking for this for years!  Things like this US guide rail production line and the changeover to imperial will greatly enhance Festool's reputation for innovation, listening to what customers want and standing behind their products.  I expect many new Festool customers because of this.  Hope the FOG software and servers can handle the expected increase in load.

Why waste valuable resources and money on inconsequential and frivolous things like a new impact driver, LED lights on routers or fixing the Kapex?

RB - many will miss the sarcasm in that post. 

I doubt this is going to be a trend. Making guide rails here makes sense for a lot of reasons:

• Manufacturing is not complex as it entails outsourced extrusions, a single automated line and probably one person with limited training
• Shipping the rails was probably costly due to their unwieldy nature
• Likely this is an effort to expand worldwide production capacity without taking up room in another manufacturing plant
• Raw materials inventory is limited to extrusions, stickers and 2 flavors of strips
• May be some advantage to exporting to Canada and Mexico from the US versus EU
• Eliminates exchange rate fluctuations

Given that this is probably the only item in the lineup that does not involve complex assembly my hunch is this is a limited endeavor and I'd be surprised to see more production come to the US.

Then again, I may be all wet.

RMW


 

I heard something about the TS 55 being a potential candidate. 

RB - many will miss the sarcasm in that post. 

  If you have had multiply Kapex motors burn out like me and others you definitely won't miss it!!!!

I doubt that Systainers are on the near horizon.  Actually made by a "sister company". 

Totally correct about shipping air though.  I doubt that there is enough ancillary penetration of the product in NA although so many of us like them.

Peter

Is there an update what they are making here?

This fall we’re expanding our Lebanon facility, and part of that will be used for additional production. I’m not sure how much has been finalized and how many details I can share at this point. Honestly, we’re out of space, so — and this is more speculation than official word — we need the new building before we can add too many more production lines.

Here’s a recent article from the Indianapolis Business Journal about the expansion:
https://www.ibj.com/articles/69561-high-end-tool-maker-expanding-again-in-lebanon-adding-65-jobs

I'm curious, are the Lebanon-manufactured rails labeled as made in US? I just bought an 800mm rail, and the box says "made in Germany", and I don't see any country of origin labeling on the rail.

Here's some earlier input from Tyler.

The LR and FS 5000 will not be part of the initial launch. All other lengths will be included.

At this point, this shouldn't change the product offerings. All of this could change at some point. We're starting fairly small with plans to continue growing.

Quote from: Cheese on July 10, 2017, 12:12 PM

Quote from: TylerC on July 10, 2017, 11:55 AM

The first production line will be for assembly of the FS Guide Rails.

That doesn't appear to be an extruder, does that mean the bare extrusions are still made in Germany?

Extrusion for these rails will be done in the U.S. but not as part of the production line in Lebanon.

Here ya go Michael...an earlier post.