Purchased my Hammer K3 Winner about 8 years ago and because of space constraints, I ordered one with the short stroke sliding table and with the 31 1/2" rip capacity. Does anybody know if Felder sells kits to do this? I really love the saw but the short stroke slider and the 31 1/2" rip capacity is "crimping my style". I sold one of my cars and now have more real estate for my shop
Upgrading to a longer slide on my Hammer K3 Winner - does Felder sell a kit?
- Thread starter krudawg
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I doubt they do a kit but I am led to believe that there are two different chassis sizes in the K3 range and that is to accommodate the longest slider that is available. I would be interested in what Felder have to say as I have thought of the same thing myself.
Tom the Remodeler
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It has been my experience that Felder is very cautious about selling parts like this. I actually went the reverse route on my KF700SP, I ordered it with the 1250mm rip capacity, and wound up ordering the parts from Felder to convert it to a 800mm rip configuration. Even then, I don't think I've ever used the rip fence for ripping, just as a bump stop for the slider. Ordering the 800mm rip parts was expensive, if I were to do it over again I would have just sold the machine and bought a new one in the configuration I wanted....
Unfortunately I do not have an official factory dealer answer either. The K3 sliding saw comes in three stroke lengths all with the same base. 31, 48, 79 inches. Same base for all three. The 79 does come with an outrigger. But its the same base to bolt the arm onto as the shorter sliders. So in theory, it should be easy for Hammer/Felder to sell you the longer sliding table and outrigger if you want it too. It would be a simple bolt on replacement for your shorter slider now. Kind of like bolting different size rims onto your vehicle.
Same bolt pattern for all sizes of rims. However, as someone else pointed out, the cost probably does not make sense at all. I suspect if they do sell the longer slider separately, it would be so prohibitive that it makes more fiscal sense to just sell the shorter slider saw complete, and buy a longer slider complete new.
Same bolt pattern for all sizes of rims. However, as someone else pointed out, the cost probably does not make sense at all. I suspect if they do sell the longer slider separately, it would be so prohibitive that it makes more fiscal sense to just sell the shorter slider saw complete, and buy a longer slider complete new.
I agree with Tom G, it may make more sense to sell the existing machine and buy the config you want. There is always a lot of discussion on Felder Owners Group forum (the other FOG 
) about aligning the slider to the CI table and blade. If you got an upgrade kit, you may be spending a lot of time on the alignment.
I have a C3-31, 2000mm/79in slider. Getting it dialed-in is not trivial. Good luck with the upgrade, cheers.....
) about aligning the slider to the CI table and blade. If you got an upgrade kit, you may be spending a lot of time on the alignment.I have a C3-31, 2000mm/79in slider. Getting it dialed-in is not trivial. Good luck with the upgrade, cheers.....
Tom Gensmer said:
Not in my experience, when I bought mine a big selling point from Felder was that a K3 could be a added to with any option after the sale and the cost would be the same as it would be if it came from the factory with the option on it. I bought and fitted the outrigger some time after I bought the saw and that was indeed the case and it had the advantage that the saw already has a cross cut fence on it and buying the outrigger I got another one as well. This really is handy for setting up parallel cuts when the two fences are fitted and really really handy when DRO's are fitted to both fences.
Yes, I heard back from Felder and was told I CAN upgrade the rip capacity with a longer Fence guide bar and a wider rip table. No pricing was given because I was not doing it right away and the person that called me was not a tech. He said I would hear back from a tech soon but they are swamped right now
Tom the Remodeler
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krudawg said:
When I upgraded my KF700 to a DRO rip fence, the cost was ~3x what it would have cost had I had it included in the original machine configuration.
When I was working with the Felder techs putting the order together, they seemed surprised that Austria would even sell me the parts, saying that they had previously run into a lot of headaches selling other parts to customers who didn't know how to properly install them, in turn calling tech support and gumming up the works with nuisance calls.
Darrell Peart mentions this in one of his recent videos about his K700, wherein he acknowledges that he had originally planned on buying the machine pretty stripped down, then adding components/features at a later time, only to find out that Felder straight up wouldn't sell him the parts, or the cost was so prohibitive that it wasn't worth pursuing.
When I was exploring adding the DRO to the rip fence (I primarily use it as a bump stop) and crosscut fence, the money worked out pretty close in terms of adding the DRO to the KF700, or just selling the KF700 and upgrading to a K940.
This whole process might be a little more straightforward on the Hammer machines since there are fewer options, I can only speak to Felder/Format4 machines.
Tom that is interesting as I had the opposite from Felder in Oz. I bought my K3 and asked at the time if I could buy the outrigger later on and was told yes and the price would be exactly the same as if the outrigger was added to the initial purchase price. I did that and the price I paid was the same as speccing the original purchase with the outrigger. Keep in mind this was 10 years ago, in Oz and it was not a Felder machine. Felder actually made a big point of buying and adding things later as part of the sale.
