Probably, but I've had trouble connecting really old Makita with newer Makita ones! Specifically, my two old 1.4M tracks don't play nicely with the 3m one. The dimensional difference is microscopic - you can _just_ feel it with fingettips, but it's enough to bring the saw sled to a grinding halt.
Why? These are all aluminium extrusions, and I suspect someone has had to change the die (they wear, obviously). It's probably just the difference between something made at the end of life of an old die, with something extruded with a newer one. It probably happens with Festool too, but if not, they're changing the die more often, which might go some way towards explaining why they're so expensive!
When we were in LA a couple of years ago, there was an exhibition at the Hammer Institute of work done by the Thomas Heatherwick design studio, including a pre-production example of his extruded bench. It's apparently one of the largest extrusions ever attempted, and on display was an offcut from the start of a production run:
It takes a lot of material before the run settles into the correct shape.
I have my own picture of this (or a lump of extrusion very similar) from the exhibition, but the background is very cluttered, sadly.
Obviously, once you have achieved steady state (or whatever), you could have continuous benches hundreds of metres long (if you could transport them!). And, per-metre, pretty cheap, too. The piece in the picture is about eight or ten feet long, and the end nearest the camera is the intended bench/chair profile.
E.
