I am happy to show you here my vertical panel saw. This is self-made machine and I will show you the most important elements of the vertical panel saw. Now, I will take the camera and I will film the details of the panel saw. The heart of the vertical panel saw is a mobile circular saw. This is a normal circular saw, purchasable in any shop for power tools. The saw is mounted on a wooden slide. The wooden slide is nothing else than a simple board that can be pushed back and forth between the two rails. I will now show you how these rails were made. When you look at the profile of the rail you can see that an L-profile and a U-profile both of aluminium have been screwed together. Here we can see the screws. Both profiles are identical, so same system on both sides. The L-profile is used for stability and the U-profile is used to guide the slide. It is important that the slide can be pushed from the top to the bottom as precisely as
possible. These profiles are standard profiles and available in every metal shop. Above we can see the wheel which is used for the counterweight. The counterweight keeps the machine in balance. This allows me to leave the machine in any possible position. The machine is switched on permanently with a cable tie and the machine is no longer switched on and off with the machine switch but with an additional switch. The machine is started here. It is important that the cable is mounted in such a way that it can never get in touch with the cutting blade. I continue to show the mechanism with the counterweight. We have already seen the first wheel. The weight of the circular saw goes down to a second wheel and then to a third and fourth roller. The counterweight is mounted on a pulley with a ratio of 1:2. This means that the counterweight must have twice the weight of the slide with the machine. Consequently, the counterweight needs only half the way of the entire cutting length. Here you can see the shaft with the counterweight inside. Now when I pull the slide down you can see how the counterweight comes up. Basically, its working like the counterweight of an elevator. When I push the slide up again, the counterweight goes down and disappears into the shaft. On the front-side, we can see the vertical panel saw. You can see here that the saw is not exactly in the middle. This is intentionally made and allows me to cut longer panels on the left side. I also installed a meter-stick and you can see that I can measure and cut pieces up to 90 cm in length. Of course, the meter-stick is mounted in such a way that the cut is exactly set on point zero. In order to prevent that the saw blade touches the meter-stick, I shortened the meter-stick slightly on both sides of the cutting line. The system is a combination between a vertical panel saw and a material store. The material store increases the weight of the machine and thus the stability of the vertical panel saw. Now I will show you the machine in action and we will also test the machine's accuracy. To do so, I will cut a strip on one side of
this plate, then turn the plate and then also cut a strip on the other side. We now place the plate on the machine. The machine can accommodate plates with a height of up to 120 cm. We will cut the plate on both sides and rotate the plate in between. If the plate becomes a trapezoid, the cut was not exactly done with a right
angle. If both sides are of the same length, then the right angle is given. Now we turn the plate and we cut the other side of the plate. Now we take the plate and measure the length above and below. We have 76.5 cm above, now we measure on the lower side and also get 76.5 cm. This means that the cut is exactly in a right angle. In case of a different length we would have got a trapezoid and that would mean that the cut was not made in a right angle. So, this is all about my self-made panel saw. There are also plans available for this machine at “holzwerken.net” where the machine was presented in a special edition in November 2017. In the special edition you will find the plans and a list of required material to build the panel saw. Otherwise I don't have much more to add. The machine works very well, but has the limitation that plates can only be cut at a right angle. However, in 98% of the cases I do need a cut with a precise right angle. Thank you for watching.
