need recommendations for new shop cabinets with systainers in mind...

[onocoffee]

The interesting, to me anyway, thing is that Festool seems all about job site work, not in a dedicated workshop. This is most apparent in the MFT, which is portable, and the in-systainer tablesaw.

If they were going after workshops, they'd make a bigger stationary table without folding legs. Something hefty to stay put under loads. Same for the tablesaw.

Not that this is bad, mind you, just as I said (and others seem to agree) what their target market is and isn't.

I presume that the in the European market, Festool is very popular on the jobsite. Recently I heard that Festool USA has started to outpace Germany in sales. I wonder if this might have an impact on the focus of upcoming products. Perhaps the Not-Too-Very-High-Priced-Over-Corded with the ETSC2 and the lowering of Abrasive Systainer Sets are an indicator of this?

I would prefer though that Festool not necessarily follow the trend of the other tool manufacturers with more cost-cutting and a switch to canvas bags (I really despise those).

 

[sansbury]

Congrats on the new space! I recently opened a new shop/garage about half the size that is a mixed wood/metal/machine/everything space so have been thinking about this a lot.

My biggest thing has been to put everything that I can on wheels, and build stuff to the same table height unless there’s a reason I can’t. This way I can reconfigure the space, push things together to make larger surfaces, and so on.

My intent is to keep everything Festool in systainers because they make organization pretty fire-and-forget, and if you add or change tools you don’t have to rebuild drawers or anything to fit them. If I had your space and only did woodworking I could see just having oversized drawers dedicated to each major tool but you might have more stuff and want to be more efficient too.

I built a mobile MFT+Sawstop CTS cart based on the Build Series 4 plans on YouTube and have been liking it so far. If you’re looking for some inspiration it’s a good starting point and will give you lots of ideas of where to go next.

One other thing to consider is plumbing compressed air if you use it. I have multiple CNCs that use it plus a welding corner so it was kind of a necessity to not be dragging hoses everywhere all the time. I used Rapidair Maxline 3/4” and if I was doing it again id either drop down to the 1/2” or go with 3/4” pipe. The flexible tube is about half the cost and is a pain to straighten but works fine. The pipe is easier to assemble and will look a bit sharper unless you’re really OCD hanging the flex line. I think the 3/4” was overkill for my installation but didn’t cost much more. The Rapidair site has calculators so you can look at system length and SCFM to figure out what size you need.