Here an update of the circular panel saw I’ve build end of last year. In the first post I’ve written about how I’ve build the ähm … let’s call it body. Of course it needs a few more things around to use it properly. And I also got a few Ideas of changes I’d like to do in the near future.
First of all the most important thing: the legs. I used four 40 by 40 mills square aluminum tubes for that. With four M6 rivet nuts at their ends, they are screwed to the main body of the saw. Because the saw is a little heavy to be carried around by on person – at least in a healthy way – I’ve screwed a piece of wood with two wheel at two of the legs. No I can move it easily around by lifting up one side of the saw for a few centimeters.
Then I didn’t like the idea of starting and stopping the saw by plugging and unplugging the power cable. Therefor I bought a cheap rotary switch and a power cable. I decided to go for a rotary switch for safety reasons. The chance to switch it on by accident – for example with my upper leg, while adjusting something close to the saw blade, is very small.
An other thing which was not that good is using a the Bosch or ITEM like extrude as a parallel stop. Because of radius on the edges it’s not ideal for thin sheet metal. A layer of white plexy glass, screwed to the extrude solved this for now as a temporary solution. I used plexy because I had a piece of it laying around. But plexy it not exactly the right material for this. On long term I’d like to use 10mm thick white POM. But fist I got to find such a piece for a good price.
End stops. Because of the design with the linear bearings the movement of the table is very limited. Which is not such a big deal for me. I’m cutting mostly smaller pieces. But it’s always a bit of hassle if the table gets dislodged while working with the saw. That’s why I made this end stops. They can be easily rotated by hand. Not unimportant when cleaning the saw.
For the future I am planning one big modification. I’d like to use the space left of the saw blade and put there an other aluminum plate. This can be used for a jig saw. In the past I often improvised this by strapping a jig saw to a piece of wood which I attached to a table. Using a jig saw upside down and moving the workpiece instead of the jig saw always gave me very pleasant results.