What do "you" want?

I hear you Dadoo, but I’m betting that some engineer is squeamish about a tool that will adjust itself with the small push of a button, when it’s your and mine hands sliding about near the blade. We think its cutting a 1/4” depth and we have a 3/4 ” board so we know it’s not coming through the top. And then all of a sudden it appears and we find that a finger or two is toast.

It would make my life easier on my table saw I have to turn the crank about 45 turns to go to 45 degrees. And I’m down on my hands and knees when I’m doing that. It would sure make my woodworking more enjoyable.

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com

That is a great idea Dadoo – I’m going to send it to Ron Popeel (sp) tomorrow, hell, he’s been involved with inventing everything except the internet (and we know that Al Gore did that).

It seems that they have the lifts for the routers – wonder how hard it would be for the TS. Karson does make a good point though about the depth – an oops by the lifter would be a bad thing, unless you also have the “no winier” cutter installed.

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

I hope it doesnt get as confusing as my cell phone…a voice activated table saw…automatic fence…Internet connection… counts how much wood i cut up and reorders what i need…lays out my cut list on a screen…makes coffee…calls my wife when I’m working late and have lost track of time…beeps me when one of my projects on lumberjocks gets a comment.

-- http://www.woodsongsfurniture.com

Beleive it or not, Craftsman used to have a Radial Arm saw that would do the depth thing. My Dad used to own one. You would hit a button, the saw would lower to zero itself out, then you punched in the decimal equivalent of the depth you wanted to cut. The only draw bacsk were it would go down in any saw track you had previously cut into the table and it didn’t have a fraction capability. (he taped a conversion chart to the side of the arm.) Sears has discontinued this feature but you can still find them out there on Craigs List at times.

-- Greg - Charles Town, WV

Another problem that was not mentioned with the automatic blade depth is when you are using jigs and sleds that raise the workpiece above the table. It would be an awesome idea though. I guess you could have an override so if you were using a sled, you could input the depth manually to take into acount the height of the sled.

I think what would be better for me is for a power tool such as a table saw to automatically align and zero itself to the table/fence. Would be awesome for switching between a normal blade and a dado, or blades that have different kerfs.

Another would be for a bandsaw to automatically align itself while you are feeding stock so that the blade is exactly parallel to the fence and eliminate runout. Man… Think of the possibilities (resawing, veneering, etc) and never having to align it youself…

One other would be for each power tool to come with a little helper that would do the woodworking for you…. wait…. that kinda takes all the fun out of woodworking.. I guess you could say “wow.. look at this beautiful piece of furniture my little helpers made.. I helped them with the finish!” :)

-- Jamie, Kentucky

Got one more.. A power tool that you feed your stock into and it automatically slices the wood with 4 to 6 bandsaw type blades. So if you had a piece of stock 4” wide, you could have 1 – 4/4 piece, 1 – 5/4 piece, 1 – 3/4 piece, and 2 – 2/4 pieces (if that makes any sense). It would be something like a multiple blade bandsaw (or scrollsaw with a resaw type blade) with a power feed table. Each blade would be independently adjustable for cutting depth (or spacing). The table height would be adjustable similar to a power planer…

You could call it the ‘VeneeResaw’

It would save a lot of time resawing, and probably get more people into doing it..

Hmm.. I may try to patent this… :)

-- Jamie, Kentucky

Actually, Jamie, I’m afraid the lumber mills beat you to it on this one. Most of them use variable-width multi-bandsaws to cut rough boards down to size. If you’ve never seen it done, try to catch it on one of the how-to channels or YouTube. I don’t have a link there, but they’ve posted everything else, right? It’s really cool to watch.

Of course, those rigs are a little bit big for most shops…

-- Robert from Raymond, MS. "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is therefore not a practice, but a habit." - Aristotle

Soooo…”What do you want”???

-- Bob Vila would be so proud of you!

A self cleaning shop! Something like a roomba that can get around obstacles (and hold tons of woodchips), or sensors built into a dust collection system that’ll keep sucking until the floor and air is clean (quietly)

-- I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. - Vincent Van Gogh

I would buy a Shopba, Scott. That would be sweet. It could bidegrade the chips to make power to run itself.
Also a little elf that comes in every night and sharpens everything.

-- Stevethepeeve -- I'm no rocket surgeon

I would like a resaw bandsaw that had a built in planer/jointer/sander, anything that would smooth the surface. As you resaw, the rough surfaces of both pieces are smoothed so you don’t have to send them through a sander or jointer/planer. Maybe they could place a separate sanding strip directly behind the blade?

-- Owen Johnson - aka IowaWoodcrafter

While the engineers are at it why not add a feature like a CD changer that could swap different blades by voice command?

-- Only the Shadow knows....................

GraveDigger,
I was looking for something that would fit in a workshop with the VeneeResaw. I couldn’t fit a multi-head saw mill in mine… :)

-- Jamie, Kentucky

I want my mitre saw to have a better dust collection system

-- "Functional WoodArt" by Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

How about a robot that does woodworking for you? You could just sit and watch TV while your woodbot made all of your furniture? And then it could automatically upload the data to LumberJocks?

I actually really like Dadoo’s original idea. They are already making saws with digital readouts for angle. But I don’t think the readout is the key. The blade hight is usually a relative thing, and we mostly eyeball it so that it is just a little above the stock anyway. But the motorized movement would be slick. Sure, the up/down switch would be protected (so you don’t have any accidents).

Here’s an alternative idea, that might be cheaper than CNC style motors: “Above the table” hight adjustment. Just make a removable wheel that easily installs above the table and then is removed before cutting (just like a router lift).

As far as getting an accurate bevel angle out of your table saw, probably the best edition to my shop recently was the Wixey digital display.

-- Dust collectors suck.

Jamie—Oh, c’mon. Just knock out a wall! (or two)

-- Robert from Raymond, MS. "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is therefore not a practice, but a habit." - Aristotle

If your really looking for a production system that you can really program, look at the TigerStop system. Completely programable for multiple cuts or programming in all your cuts, and the stop moves so all you have to do is the programming. It will even adjust for knots and bad places in the wood so you can maximize useable product. I received a free DVD in the mail. TigerStop.com. I am in no way affiliated with the site.

Hey Gravedigger.. I thought my shop was big at 24×40.. my god.. what size is yours? half a football field? :)

btw.. I have the same craftsman bandsaw as you..

-- Jamie, Kentucky

wixey is really great. I use the one for blade angle and for depth settings. I love it. I also have the digital readout for my rip fence adjustment on my table saw. They are easy to use and work well. I may add one to my thickness planer next. I got my first one when it was on sale at Woodcraft here in town and got hooked.

As for an electric motor adjustment in angle and blade height. Wow, what a great idea to add one more thing to break on my equipment… Sorry for the sarcasm, but if I have to choose between a tried and true and adding an electric motor… I’ll stick to what I have.

-- making sawdust....

I think the same thing was said about the power windows in your car, which seem to stop working when half down in a major rainstorm, while following a truckload of chickens. But unlike those windows, the saw blade raiser thingy would have to be allowed to be over-ridden just for that reason.

You could fairly easily make an built in angle guage by taking the sensor off the Wixey and mounting it to the motor , or blade housing, etc. The digital display would then be mounted on the saw case.

As for that Roomba/ Shopba thingy…I don’t care for mindless robots that go half the night bumping into everything an wasting power as well as time. A blind French maid could do the same thing and look better doing it.

-- Bob Vila would be so proud of you!

Jamie,

Actually, the whole thing’s 40×60 with a 12×60 shed on one side.. The actual woodshop will be the area under the loft – 30×40.

I’d like a nice big Rikon or equivalent bandsaw, but most of the budget now is going into putting in loft floor and woodshop walls for now.

-- Robert from Raymond, MS. "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is therefore not a practice, but a habit." - Aristotle

Dadoo,

Actually, Roomba DOES make the Shop Dog robotic vacuum. However, I think it’s only good for getting under the tools and in the corners after the real cleaning’s done. Now, if they made one with a front-end loader that can handle shavings from bowl turning…

-- Robert from Raymond, MS. "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is therefore not a practice, but a habit." - Aristotle