by 9fingers » 23 Jun 2018, 15:56
I've just had the change to give the Festool Kapex KS60 E-Set SMCS a quick test drive today.
I'd best state my prejudices first.
I'd regarded sliding saws as having to be exceptionally well engineered to make accurate cuts over the length of the slide and I've avoided them to date
Festool seem overpriced for the amateur user and the excellent backup which you pay for would benefit the trade but less so the home user.
However this saw that retails around £580 from our favourite west country dealer has recently been on offer for £439 elsewhere which is a very very good price.
This saw with its 216mm blade and 225mm slide will cut a 305mm (12") wide board with ease at 90 degrees.
The cut can be set just over +/- 45 degrees from vertical and +/- 60 degrees horizontally. This makes it stand out from many machines that only offer 45 vertical tilt to one side and +/-45 horizontally.
The slide has forward facing rails which are very rigid and reduce the amount of space Needed(wasted!) behind the saw compare to other brands/designs.
Space needed behind the fence is a modest 325mm and when set to 90 degree operation needs 410mm in front. If the machine is stored at 60 from the straight cut position, this reduces to 230mm in front of the fence, a total of 555mm front to back. The machine width is 540mm and 610 high with the blade raised.
The supplied blade is superb and gives an almost shiny cut surface. Although brush motor powered (1200W), it is not too noisy and did not have me reaching for the ear defenders.
The blade depth stop is very solid and provides an adjustment for trenching. I did not give this an exhaustive test but this mode does expose some design compromises. When fully pushed away from the operator, the central axis of the blade is significantly in front of the fence line which means that the end of trenches follow the curve of the blade. In order to cut flat bottom trenches, a piece of parallel scrap wood needs to be clamped to the fence to bring the workpiece in front of the blade axis which reduces the trenching capacity from 305mm to 265mm but not the end of the world.
The trench depth control is a small un calibrated rotary knob which does not appear to have any locking facility. This could rotate with machine vibration and the trench depth could vary during a job. One nice feature is that the the depth stop screw pivots on an arc and can be disengaged for a through cut and returned to the previous preset trench depth - assuming it does not drift with vibration.
The worst feature is the LED light which is meant to cast a shadow of the blade on to the job so you can align the cut to a scribed line. I was using this in daylight and would have needed a photographers cape to have seen this. It may be better in a gloomy shed but now we are lighting our workshops to a higher level, this feature needs to be be much brighter to be useful.
There is easy to use locking knob on the sliding mechanism to return it to simple chopsaw mode (80mm crosscut capacity) and a positive lock to hold the head in the down position when not in use.
This machine is very well engineered and slides accurately and at the offer price matches other relatively high end machines bringing it closer to hobby wallet capacity.
I'm sure Malc will be along later with a much more detailed review of his but I'm impressed so far. Shame I have to pack it all away ready to transport it to Andy in la belle France.
Hope this has been useful
Bob