18 March 2009

Systems that suck

I'm well into this fantasy stage now of machine upgrades for the 'shop in what will be less than a couple of years now. My original train of thought was maybe a bit too enthusiastic, certainly regarding the Jet SS which now tops out at over £1500. Interestingly the new Record compact saw is about £600 and has all the main features that I want...mainly though it's a 250mm blade and a smaller footprint than my current Kity 419. I think also the p/t that I'm after will be the Axminster one with the cast iron fence as it got very good reviews from F&C a while back and again, it's about £600 as opposed to nearly £1K for the Jet equivalent. I'm still not decided on a bandsaw, except that it needs to have a 250mm depth of cut, so there's still plenty of time to mull over what's needed. Something I have been toying around with though is the idea of having just one decent extractor and plumbing in a pipe system with blast gates for all the other machines, but I'd still need to keep the Axminster WV1000 for power tools and the disc sander. It's an interesting idea...the machine I've been looking at is one sucking 2200cu.m/hr which is a hell of a lot of air, but it would have to go where the lathe is positioned at the moment. That's not too much of a problem though, as I want to downsize the lathe anyway and go for a small Jet lathe with 510mm 'twixt centres, which is a lot smaller than the current one. The Jet pillar drill still has pole position though as it seems to have better bearings that the equivalent Axminster and after my 'near misses' with the existing one at the weekend, it's a definite candidate for renewal.
It's always puzzling is this sort of thing, 'cos I want to get the best value kit for the 'shop but spend the least amount money...so it's back to scurfing t'internet for a while.

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