Table saw in a lowrider table?

Anybody done this effectively? I’m thinking about how i want to set up the new shop, wife definitely wants a full size cnc. I don’t need a larger table saw for anything I do, but an extended table and outfeed would be nice, so it would be really cool if i could build that into the cnc bed.
If not, I’ll probably just build the table high enough to store the saw under the cnc and pull it out and put it on something to at least have an outfeed.

The biggest issue that I’d see is attaching the fence to the tablesaw. Well that and the cast iron table that the tablesaw usually wants as a bed isn’t something that I’d be happy about crashing a bit into. Could make the spoilboard problematic. I don’t think that I’d like losing the spoilboard thickness particularly for angled cuts on the tablesaw, since it’s levered so the cut angle pivots at the bed surface.

Still attaching the fence becomes an issue. The fence must be parallel to the saw blade. It takes so little angle to start to ramp up the chances of kickback, which is a HUGE injury risk. Even if you are extra careful all the time, it will do bad things to the blades, which would get expensive.

Storing the tablesaw underneath and using the LR for outfeed is probably a much better idea. Probably not too hard to make an angled track so that the tablesaw sits level with the spoilboard when extended.

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Yeah, for me the big challenge is what to do with the spoilboard. Pulling a full sheet down every time I want to use the table saw is for the birds.

Full sheet probably won’t care so much about surfacing and flatness, but that would require putting the spoil board back in the right place, too, if it ever became important.

I thought about a 2 or 3 piece spoilboard, but I cut a fair amount of 4-6 foot long pieces, so that just makes it easier to move the spoil board, not how much of it I have to move.

As for the fence, i’d use the one that’s on the saw. I’m trying to be efficient with space while maintaining convenience. I don’t think they’re is any extra performance to be had with this saw, and certainly none from a larger table. I think an inch gap around the saw should be plenty to maneuver the fence.

Right now I’m noodling over some way to raise the entire table saw an inch or two, bringing it to right at or just above the spoilboard for cutting, then dropping it back down below the spoilboard for cnc, leaving a hole under the stock.

The table is only 23x20(in) and the only time I’ll have stock over it is full sheet or nearly full sheet, so i dont think I’ll miss that part for hold downs.

I’m assuming you’re dealing with a portable job-site kind of saw, not a really heavy contractor or hybrid style monster. I saw this YouTube video a while back where they built a “drawer” under the workbench for their surface planer that then swung up on parallel pivots to bring it to a comfortable working height. I wonder if something similar could work with your tablesaw. I would want a positive locking mechanism before trying it myself.

I got a 50’s vintage Craftsman saw free on Craigslist a few years back, one with the 17 inch deep cast iron table. There’s no way I would consider lifting that into place each time I wanted to use it without serious mechanical assistance, even though I use it pretty infrequently.

If you had a cutout section of the spoil board that fit in where the saw lifted through, you would probably only need to lift the saw an inch or so (depending on the thickness of the spoil board). What about a lever like the kind folks use to lift workbenches up on to built-in caster? Here’s an example. Again, I’d definitely want a positive lock.

Yeah, lightweight aluminum and sheet steel thing.
That’s exactly the idea. Maybe build a box for it to bolt on to. Heck, I don’t even need a complicated mechanism. Even just lift it up and put a spacer block underneath. At long as i can lock it down like you said. Couple long bolts on one side where I can reach ought to do it.

I did this, but in the end it didn’t work for me. The main problem was that I couldn’t re-position the saw if I wanted to cut longer stock, since there was a wall behind me and the LR was to big to move it.

My plan looks like this, so hopefully space and maneuverability will be less of an issue. If you’d had more space, do you think you would have been happy with it?

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Probably. The large outfeed table made it easy to cut bigger, especially wider pieces.

I had built a custom fence for the full table width that was running on an aluminum extrusion on the table edge, but since it was only fixed on one end it wasn’t as rigid as I would have hoped.

I had always hoped I could find a way to pull out the saw temporarily and then use the hole for working on the ends of vertical pieces, e.g table legs, but the saw was a pain to get out.

It also got super dusty behind the saw in my setup, since that side wasn’t very accessible.

I think you could work around most of these problems with better planning though.

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Dunno if it helps, but here is a picture showing my setup. Forgot to mention that I also put in a little router table on the left so my fence was doing double duty.
You can see the aluminum extrusion on the front that the fence was running on.

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That is a great looking setup.

Do you out down a spoil board when cncing?

Thanks! It was fun using the LR for the saw and router plate cutouts. As I wrote above I stopped using this because I had situations where I would have needed to reposition the table saw but couldn’t - the table was also just too big for the size of the room. I’ve now built a smaller workbench and will adapt my LR to it instead. It also should have some work holding tricks up it’s sleeve that I’ll share once it’s done.

And mostly I didn’t add another spoilboard since it made work holding even harder. But I also almost never needed the full table, so I almost never had to cut above the saw.

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