I just sent my PSC 420 into Festool for repair based on the weird behaviour of the light. If they had viewed the video I sent them before the repair was ordered they could have saved two lots of carriage and a "repair", as you say apparently it is supposed to switch off when inverted.
Talking with them (Service dept) today, I now understand the reason why. It is so that when the users who use this saw inverted and mounted in the accessory table (I will guess less than 5% of PDC 420 owners do this) the light doesn't shine in their eyes. Why oh why they don't make that a manual override I have no idea. As it stands they have totally hobbled the functionality of the light by making it useless for anything like cutting lighting back-box recesses in vertical surfaces or downlighter holes in ceilings.
The other thing I find is that I often hold the PSC 420 upside-down in my hand as I switch it on - because the body of it is so fat I find it very difficult to activate the switches whilst also holding it in blade down orientation - so then the light won't come on even when the saw is rotated to point downward.
Festool does some great design, but they also do some implementations of features that just makes me swear a lot and question how on earth they got through the user testing stage of product development.
So, lastly, has anyone figured out how to override that stupid tilt switch? When I'm sawing with a jigsaw, I can't really think of any situation - apart from perhaps cutting a mirrored piece of acrylic (when did I ever do that with a jigsaw) - that I would not want the best illumination I could have.
Ho hum. Apparently, I need to write to Festool in Germany to tell them it is mad - but perhaps everyone else thinks it's a great feature.
Cheers
Stephen
