I am considering purchasing the Festool plunge circular saw system. My primary purpose is for cutting sheet goods. I am looking for input from anyone that owns or uses the system on a regular basis. Is the dust extraction worth the extra money or can it be hooked up to a central DC system?
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I use the Festool system as a portable shop. The saw could be exhausted into any good shop vacuum. A $20 accessory, the saw cover, is very beneficial. The saw comes with a 55" guide rail. Another 55" guide rail and the $9.00 connector will accommodate sheetgoods. The accessory clamps are used infrequently as the adhesive strips on the guide rails are tenacious.
I bought the large table but the small table is more portable. The table system replaces a miter saw in the field and will accommodate framing lumber...all with a refreshing minimum of dust and noise.
The Rotex sander combines a very aggressive stock removal setting and and a fine random orbital setting in one machine. It is amazingly dustfree when combined with a vacuum system.
The new jigsaw is the best jigsaw I have found. The company is wonderful to deal with.
If you need something to ROUGH cut sheet goods, the festool is like using an elephant gun to hunt squirrels. The festool saw performs exceptionally well and will do FINISHED cuts unlike other circular saws. You might still find it useful for on-site work or you need / want good clean cuts in sheet goods. The short rail is all I have and don’t often need a longer one. If you want to use this as a substitute panel saw then I would recommend the long rail instead of the connector for two short rails. I have a review of the saw on my web if you want more detail.
The saw can be attached to a DC system, the vacuums are really nice in and of themselves and are quite desirable for things like MCP and MDF.
PMB
http://benchmark.20m.com
I'm looking for something high end to handle double sided melamine, laminates, veneered plywood & MDF core, need to minimize the dust and minimize my handling of the sheet goods.. Now my process is my PC saw, saw giude, trim edge with router if too big for the cabinet saw- you know the process. I am looking to get the steps down to as litttle as possible.
If that is what you are after then the atf55 is a good choice. One nice aspect of the system is that their router is compatible, I use it for dado work.
PMB
http://benchmark.20m.com
Thanks Phil, I placed my order this morning for the ATF55 and 800 table. Does the router work with the same guide rails? Thier website is down & what info I have been able to get has been piecemeal. Also, I have read they have a 32mm shelf hole system for their router, do you have any knowledge on this? I have a jig set up for my routers now, just looking to improve what I've got.
Thanks
Craig
Craig,
Yes, the router works on the same guide rails. The only difference is that it has its own edge marker.
I use both the saw and the router on the MFT table. The router works great for dadoes and other precision groove work on the MFT. Overall, this is a great system. Recently, for example, I made a table top and used the router to cut precise grooves on the edges. You can easily create angled grooves by moving the fence on the MFT.
You can also use the router on the long guide rails. This is great for jointing the edges of long boards. You just have to set up the guide rails the same way you would set up the saw. Get a spiral bit for this.
Let us know how this system works for you, and feel free to ask any other questions!
Edited 1/5/2004 2:06:06 PM ET by Matthew Schenker
Craig,
You can check all that stuff out on my web site. It may look like I’m a dealer, I’m not. Just lucky enough to get to write about their gear.
PMB
http://benchmark.20m.com
I bought the saw, table, router, and several guide rails back in '99, when they first got going. They get constant use, and have never let me down. Another low budget was to cut sheet goods is to make an edgeguide from two pieces of plywood. One is stacked on top of the other. The top piece needs only to be 3-4 inches wide, with a straight edge.The other should be 10 -12 inches wide. Affix the narrow one on top of the wider one, Straight edge over the center, using glue and screws. Then, setting your saws depth of cut slightly deeper the the thickness of the plywood, run the edge of your saw along the straight edge of the narrow piece, cutting off the wider piece underneath. Instant edge guide. Not as precise, dustless or chip free, but I use this method for roughing down sheet goods all the time. I use my Porter cable Sawcat, with the vac hose attached, to catch a lot of the dust.
As far as dust pickup goes with the Festo Vac, The amount of dust it leaves behind is minimal, and a tarp on the ground makes short work of any dust. Maybe its not perfect, but it comes pretty close!
I have found that with Festool products, the dust collection is amazing. Depending on the tool, it gets closer or further from 100%.
The AT55E saw collects almost 100% of the dust through most of the cut, but there is a little "puff" of dust near the end of every cut I make. Also, dust collects inside the blade shroud and must be cleaned up once in a while. But there is no airborne dust.
With the router, there is almost 100% dust pickup. You can see some dust inside the cut when doing dadoes, but it's very minimal, and there isn't any airborne dust.
With the jigsaw, dust collection is decent. There is a good amount of dust left on the work surface and on the tool itself. Some of it is airborne. This is the only Festool product I own which is not very effective with dust collection. But to be fair, it would be difficult to provide visibility as well as excellent dust collection with a jigsaw.
The Festool sanders are nothing short of a miracle. There is absolutely no dust when I use either my Festool ROS or the sheet sander. Nothing in the air, nothing on the wood surface -- none. This is good, because sanding is where you produc the most amount of annoying and hazardous dust.
here are the pics of my set up. definitely not as pretty as the festo, but a lot more affordable
I have a lot of Festool products -- the AT55E saw, two sanders, the Trion Jigsaw, their large MFT table, and the router. All of these tools are beautiful and smooth to use. Dust collection is amazing, especially on the sanders, where it is needed most.
The MFT table easily replaces any sliding miter saw on the market, and gives you a cross-cut capacity of 25". There are endless combinations with the MFT/AT55E/Festool router.
On the AT55E saw itself, I can easily say that I adore this machine. I have two 55" guide rails that I connect together for 8-foot ripping, and it produces excellent cuts with no dust. Well, there is a little dust near the end of the cuts, which I can't seem to prevent. What I like aboutt this system is that the cuts are clean, smooth, and safe. I agree that a single 8-foot guide rail would be better than two shorter ones joined together, but if shop space is an issue, the two joined together work fine.
It does look like a nice system, and i debated purchasing one a while ago, however, the saw was almost $1000 canadian, so i decided to pass. then i came up with a very simple solution, just build my own guide rail. i took festo's idea and with $20 bucks worth of steel, and some plywood, i made a guide and a special base for my dewalt circular saw. the guide is just a piece of plywood with a cold rolled steel bar screwed to it, and the base is another piece of plywood with a dado cut into the bottom. i was careful to cut the dado to a very accurate width, and to line it up perfectly with the edge of the blade before bolting it to the base. i don't use this setup all that often, but it has worked flawlessly, cutting very straight and accurately. i bought a good quality dimar blade for my saw as well, so all in all, i have about $80 and maybe an hour invested in a system that will make a gluejoint quality cut. the only thing festo has is better dust collection and a plunge feature, but for an extra $920, i can live without all that. plus i have a good TS that handles most of the work i do. hope this helps
Andrew
PS, I'll try and post some pics later on
Craig, you will be lucky to get 3-5" of suction through the Festool vac hose connected to the typical DC system (DC's move lots of air at low static pressure through big pipes). A good shop vac will pull up to 10 times the static pressure at the tool end of the Festool hose. This will get a lot more air through the hose and collect virtually all the dust. This was the way the ATF saw's dust collection design is meant to work.
However, the vac cannot move enough total air to do very well with the volume of debris from a planer, for example - hence the need for DC's. In any case, the most important thing in getting dust is to get it right where it's created, before it's flung into the air you are breathing.
Regards, Larry
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