Drich said:
Thanks Tom for taking the time to give a great reply to my questions. I did talk with Felder this afternoon and they are out of the 300 and 300S at this time but may have some coming in on the container in 3 weeks or so. I may head down to the show room when they come in as Dallas is only 4.5 hours away from me. I did go there last year when I picked up my Hammer jointer/planer machine. The sales guy did say that Felder bought Ruwi and they put the Felder name on them here and Ruwi across the pond.
They sure do seem like a lot of cash for what they are. No motor or cast iron table to machine. Just some square tube steel , caster wheels and a hydraulic cylinder weld it up and ready to go. I will let you all know what way I decide to go. Thanks again
Hi [member=42176]Drich[/member] ,
My pleasure, glad my rambling was helpful. Yeah, there's been a lot of musings online about what accounts for the price of this class of lifting table, but the pricing is consistent across several brands, you'd think that if there was someplace to undercut the competition they would. It seems that ~$1,800 is as low as they can go without compromising performance.
My memory is that my Felder salesperson told me they were using steel off-cuts from their CNC machines for the FAT frames, clever up cycling of what would otherwise be a waste stream.
Interesting to hear that Felder is sold out of the 300 and 300S, they must be popular. I have the 500S, which is the same footprint as the 300S but higher weight capacity (500kg vs. 300kg). My thought was to "buy once, cry once" and opted for the heavier capacity. I doubt I'll ever come close to pushing the 500kg capacity, rather my thought was that by going with the heavier hydraulics I'd be putting less strain on them when lifting intermediate weights.
Depending on how far out the Felder units are backordered, have you considered the Rangate lifting carts? I believe they are importing the casters and hydraulics from Europe, fabricating the frames and assembling the tables in North America. I think they're available in a few different sizes.
The stock "300" size is comparable to the footprint of a MFT, and would be great for staging- and/or moving- parts around the shop. A lot of my work involves working on larger doors and windows, so I think the larger footprint of the 300S or 500S is worthwhile.
My shop is ~ 700sf, and stuffed with larger machines (10' sliding table saw, 28" bandsaw, 11hp shaper, 20" jointer/planer, 16" wide belt sander, horizontal mortiser, hydraulic frame press, etc...), so I'm certainly not wheeling the table around the shop much. Rather, I have the FAT 500S located in the center of the shop, with the sliding table saw, shaper, jointer/planer, and bandsaw at the middle of each of the cardinal directions, so it's adjacent to each of the primary machines, so there's really no need to move it much.
While the lifting table would likely be excellent for chair and table makers, my primary use case is for handling large, heavy doors and windows. I work solo, and many of these sashes are so heavy I wouldn't be able to lift them onto a standard table surface by myself. With the lifting table, I can lower the table to its lowest position, which allows me to tip the door/window onto the table, then pump it up to working height.
To save on shipping costs, Rangate recommends having a local CNC shop fabricate your perforated top. My top is 1" thick baltic birch with the popular 20mm x 96mm grid and it works great with all of the normal clamps. I prefer it to the MFT, since I can work right up to the edge of the surface (the v-groove frequently poses a challenge for me). If you want edge clamping, I've seen users bolt a 40mm x 40mm extrusion to the underside of the table edge.
The RUWI beams and clamping elements are fantastic, I strongly recommend them. The sacrificial strips do wear out, but they're just attached with screws and are easy to renew. I recently started using the
Knapp sKLICK connectors, my long term plan is to make a modular top system for the beams (foam, carpet, and wedges) like what's shown in the
"Orange Book".
I'm curious to hear what direction you opt to go, please do follow up.
