Best Metabo Cut-Off & Mitre Saws

A cheap offering, damaging the Metabo brand! – On 17/01/23 I took delivery of a Metabo KS 216 M drop saw. Despite it's professional appearance, it fails to meet some basic standards. Let's start… Read more

with the least important thing which is "dust extraction", and move down. It's almost non existent. As can be seen from my photos, far more sawdust ends up on the saw base than goes up into the collection bag. There were only four cuts taken to produce this amount of dust. As I'm now stuck with this saw, I'll see what I can organize in terms of having a vacuum cleaner attached to it.

Now for the all important workpiece clamp, again as can be seen from my photos, if you place the clamp on the right side of the saw, there is no space for the saw body (and blade) to descend into. Therefore it cannot be used in the vertical position. Let's look at the alternative horizontal position. As I have illustrated in the last photo, this would only be suitable for a piece of wood at least as thick as the round part of the clamp head. Any other scenario would be very dangerous. This limits it's horizontal use quite significantly.

Absolutely the most disappointing fault with this saw is it's inability to give accurate cuts. Let me explain. The first thing I did with this saw was to cut a block of wood (as seen in one picture) at 90 degrees and check it with my highly accurate engineers' square. The cut was way off. I loosened the four bolts holding the fence and adjusted it to be exactly square to my blade (perpendicular). I then did a re-cut and found it was still off. I played with this until I got it to the point of being reasonable. I then moved the saw table to the 15 degree position from the direction of the right. I moved it back to the 90 degree position and did another cut, only to find my cut was way off again. I then realized that there is a huge inaccuracy in the "stops" for the mitre settings. Move the table from one direction and "feel" the 15 degree stop, then go to the other direction and back to 15 degree stop and there is a visible difference as to where it stops. I have illustrated this fact in photos. The net effect of this means that unless I set it at 90 degrees and leave it there, any time I want to cut any angle other than 90, let's say 30 degrees, firstly I have to check that it is 30 degrees, and when I'm finished re check my 90 degree setting. To summarize this observation, the "stop points" for the mitre table are loose and sloppy. It's just sheer good luck if you stop at the right place! I bought this saw to do small work like jewelery boxes etc. so accuracy was my top priority. I have completely wasted my money as this saw is suitable for house framing and not much else. There seems little point writing about the few things I like about this saw, as it's inaccuracy overshadows and outweighs everything else.