TKS 80 setup not a great experience

urowho

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Joined
Oct 19, 2018
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15
Not going perfectly so far.

Just bought base unit and sliding table. Open box and the first thing that fell out was the locking pin, clearly not been in the saw for some time. Next tried to raise the blade - absolutely stuck. No way could the knob be turned by hand. Had to use a rubber wrench to get it moving, with quite a degree of force. Next tweaked sliding mitre which was initially incredibly stiff (why are instructions for these things always so poor - trial and error & common sense a million times better than the instructions).

Attached sliding table. Levelled it up.

Found piece of wood to test on.

Turned on saw green and flashing red -> solid red. Repeated a couple of times. Looked undersaw to open access to blade and cartridge to try re-seating cartridge. Not immediately obvious how to do this without reading ludicrous instructions. Noticed quite a large area of scuffing on the plastic underside of the saw. Needed to watch youtube.

Got bored came inside.

Anyone know a good dealer for Mafell?

Anyone else had similar? Should I press on? I suppose it's only two grands worth of essentially posh job site saw. I had expected a slightly better experience for my cash.

Cheers
 
I'm sorry to hear about your troubles.

Here in the US, this saw isn't available, so it's hard to say whether your experience is atypical or not.

Did you contact Festool and/or your dealer about it?  If so, what did they have to say?
 
Interesting , was either going for the festool or Mafell erica looks like the Erica as i know how well mafell tools are built !
 
OK, I've now got over my grumpiness!

Re-seating the cartridge sorted out the activation issues. The blade height adjusts smoothly.

I've added the sliding table, it glides like it's on ice skates and was very simple to adjust to perfection (unlike I hear on the Erika).

The quality of the cut is superb. Sawdust clearance very good.

It's very reassuring to know that whatever happens I will be keeping my fingers!

Whether or not 'fear, uncertainly & doubt' is a great driving mechanism for sales, there is an element that there are 'people who've never had a table saw accident' and a second group of 'people who never thought they'd have a table saw accident until they had one'.  Doing a job which relies completely on having fingers, as well as hobbies of playing keyboards and stringed instruments. The combination of the saw's abilities and safety means it remains the right choice for me. Being only 63kg means however I'm not moving this thing far! I'd have loved the slider on the Erika but I just don't want the admittedly small but disastrous risk.

Best wishes to all.
 
Thanks for that and glad it’s sorted out perhaps you could give some feedback on using the sliding table the fence and general accuracy of the saw …..
 
urowho said:
Snip.
there are 'people who've never had a table saw accident' and a second group of 'people who never thought they'd have a table saw accident until they had one'.
Snip.
In time (after the SawStop patents have all expired, and all other new saws in the market are sold with the finger-saving feature), the two groups will merge into just one as far as new saw buyers are concerned. But even when every saw is sold with the safety feature, we'll still see performance differences among brands just like the differences we encountered in table saws long before SawStop was invented.
 
Just had identical experience with my newly delivered TKS 80 of finding safety key in bottom of the delivery carton and not being able to move the Green Height control. Thought this was a practical joke by retailer's packers, so the loose key at the bottom of the box was a distraction and the real key was hidden somewhere in the depths of the machine where I could not find it. In desperation I turned to FOG to find clues, or ideally a map to the key. So the solution is to use an oil filter rubber band wrench to get the height control moving. That's a really sophisticated feature!
 
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