Here is something else to consider. This is a post Rick C. made on the same subject
and contains a good list of factors that can affect cut quality.
"I believe these two problems are interrelated. The debris from the splinter guard
tells me that your blade is wobbling during the cut, and obviously, this will also produce saw marks.
Troubleshoot why your blade is wobbling in the cut and you will probably resolve both issues.
Some possible ideas to consider are:
Too fast of a feed rate for the type of wood and type of blade.
This will cause any blade with an ATB tooth design to wobble.
Wrong type of blade for the material or type of cut.
If the blade is working too hard to complete the cut, it can cause deflection.
Too low of motor speed for the blade and cut, causing the blade to work too hard.
Too low or too high of a blade depth. This can vary with material type,
but most often it is because too much of the blade is below the cut. Try both though.
Guide rail gibs are not adjusted properly. This could result in a slight wobble of the saw,
which will then propagate and be magnified in the blade.
Oh, one last thing, the woodgrain of the material can also impact the performance of an ATB blade.
If the points of the teeth are passing through both hard and soft portions of the wood,
especially parallel to the annular rings, it will deflect the blade."
Some of the things in the list above have a subtle but real influence.
There is one more thing to add to this list, the speed control system, aka the "growling".
Unless you are pushing the saw hard the speed control will cut the power many times
a second in order to keep the speed within the range the user has selected.
Every time the power is cut teeth on the spur gears crash and a small vibration passes
through the saw, including the blade. You not only hear the growling you feel the vibration,
and that has to have an influence on the smoothness of the cut, even if subtle.
I bring it up here because several factors in the list above can be present at the same time
and the affect can be cumulative and unavoidable.
The effect of the "growling" can be reduced by pushing the saw to the point that the
speed control system does not try to slow down the rpm. The benefit is limited though
because the blade is moving along the cut faster but the improvement is sometimes
noticeable. Most noticeable is the transition from throttled to un-throttled and vice-versa.
It's kinda weird to add this to Rick's list since he gave me grief for insisting that this is a
factor in cut smoothness way back on the Yahoo forum. The people that are tight with
Festool are sensitive about this "feature". The closest any of them got to acknowledging
it was Jerry Work who said the saw "responds well to feed pressure".
