Masonry Magazine April 2003 Page. 39
Besides portability, the next thing most mason contractors look for is simplicity of design, especially as it relates to the ease of operation, maintenance and support. Is it easy to fix things, easy to get parts and replace them, easy to assemble the unit?
Coleman adds, "Another thing is, is it a productive piece of gear? What is its productivity as a piece of construction equipment? Do we provide the power plant options that customers are looking for? Will the electronic signatures work in most homes and job sites? Will the gasoline motors be consistent with what customers want and will they have enough power? Are they productive in how they've been designed to cut the materials that need to be cut?"
That last point can be critical when you look at some of the changes and advancements in the masonry units coming out these days. With new, oversized bricks and different sizes of block, some older saws are no longer capable of cutting the units in one pass. As Coleman says, "We have to make something that matches up to the pavers, bricks and blocks that are made here in America. Why build a machine to cut five inches deep when you really have to cut six inches deep?"
Lastly, we come back to the first issue, contractors are concerned about the table saw's portability. Does it have carrying handles or pockets for forklift movement? One approach, apparently more popular on the West Coast, is to have the table saw mounted on a slide-out tray in a pickup truck bed. (If you remember our coverage of truck accessories in February, this type of equipment access should be familiar.) Coleman says, "We have a lot of major builders in Southern California and that's exactly what they do. They have a truck and they mount the masonry saw on the truck and they take cuts to it versus trying to haul the saw to a job site. Nobody wants to hump around a 250-pound piece of equipment."
He adds, "I think those items are basic and very important to the masonry cutting world. That's what customers are looking for." But he cautions that his comments do have one restriction. "When I say customers, I mean U.S. customers. What we sell in America is not necessarily what's well received in the rest of the world."
There are some obvious differences between U.S. requirements and those in, for example, Europe. When Ford made those 1948 cars, they made the dashboard symmetrical so the same car could have right or left-hand drive. That way, they could be sold in the U.S. and the rest of the left-drive world, as well as in Britain and other right-drive countries. If you think of the table saw as being that dashboard, then you can make the same unit usable in both the US. and Europe by switching the power plant.
For example, we know the electric motors in North America are designed to run on 115 Hz current, while in Europe they use 220 Hz. The gasoline engines we know and expect in the
We tend to lean toward a certain design and tend to gravitate toward what is comfortable.
U.S. are not the first choice in the European Union (EU) countries, it seems. But even the saws themselves differ in size and blade types.
"In the EU, manufacturers build machines that have 220 as a power source," explains Coleman, "and that means they don't have to have some huge motor on the saw because they get more electric motor force. The EU also takes a different approach to actually cutting masonry products they are more oriented toward the rail saw, where the cutting head spins a blade and traverses on a rail to cut through the unit. In the U.S., we primarily use a 'cart and wheels' approach where you push something into the blade. That seems to be a very common way they use their construction equipment differently than what we do here. I'm not saying they don't make units like what we have, but I've noticed that as a difference. Can I sell my U.S.-style table saw overseas? Sure, if I get it down to the right price point. Here it's just the opposite. We tend to lean toward a certain design and tend to gravitate toward what is comfortable."
As we experience rising gasoline prices across the U.S., some contractors are looking for alternative power sources for their trucks, site equipment and even table saws. EU countries have long endured high gasoline prices and much of their equipment uses the less costly to run diesel engines. Diesels run longer between service requirements and use an often less
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