Rorschach":15sf2d6t said:
Slightly off topic but does anyone have one of these saws? Seems awfully good value for money for a basic little table saw, guys at the car boot sell rusty old ones missing a motor for more than that. Based on the power rating I am guessing a noisy universal motor rather than induction.
I purchased one of these last week and it seems pretty good. There are other table saws remarkably similar for around the same price range, but the thing that attracted me to the Lidl/Parkside one was:
- 3 year warranty. And after 30 days you don't even have to go back to the store, you deal directly with the service centre.
- Parkside is just a brand that Lidl put on these products, which are made by Einhell in fact. So all the parts are available, and there are large economies of scale enabling them to make a better product for the money.
Don't get me wrong, it's pretty noisy (although less than I thought it would be and you'd be wearing hearing protection anyway) and it's a formed aluminium table top so it's not going to be relatively bullet proof like cast iron.
On the plus side, it comes with the base (Clarke charge you extra!) and once assembled, the frame feels very rigid. It was fiddly to assemble the frame mostly due to the number of small nuts and bolts that are needed due to cross bracing.
Haven't used it for anything proper yet, but making some test cuts yields a clean sawn surface that cleans up in a few strokes with a hand plane - and I haven't switched out the 24 tooth blade for the 48 tooth yet either.
The rio fence actually clamps really firmly. It is possible to flex it slightly if you push firmly at the far end, but this pressure would be too much for feeding a workpiece through; it's unlikely to be an issue if you are firm but gentle in feeding and guiding. The rip fence is parallel as much as I can determine without getting into sub millimetre measurement- it certainly looks spot on.
The mitre slot has very little play laterally and virtually no rocking. One disadvantage is that to extend the mitre sled you have to use the long length off the rip fence so I'll probably just make something instead.
So initial impressions are very good. Of course I'd love to spend more on an Axminster hobby series, or the Bosch portable one looks decent, but in reality, my local timber merchant will cut wood to size for me for any large pieces, or sheet material, so anything more expensive is not needed for me.
