Carbatec 14" (345mm) Heavy Duty Bandsaw

Sold as a heavy duty bandsaw but on having used it for a number of projects over the last week, approx 8hrs of mixed uses these are my findings, I can assure you in my opinion this is a light duty machine at best I couldn't even rate it as medium duty, It is a Chinese machine with all of the usual problems that cheap Chinese equipment suffer from… Read more

including poor tolerances of machined parts causing inaccurate cuts, because of slackness and movement of bearing guides and general movement in the overall structure of the unit, the top adjusting knob to tension the blade by lifting the top pulley wheel is a plastic knob with no steel or brass insert and is fixed to the square steel shaft on the top of the thread, of course it stripped after a few uses, there is also a captive rivnut that the top pully angle adjusting thread and knob pass through that was lose and rotating in the housing making it impossible to track the blade, I had to remove the part and weld the rivnut in place, I am not sure what type or poor quality metal this is but I was unable to tig weld it with mild steel filler rod and had to use stainless which was just able to get some penetration. I dropped the plastic knob and it literally shattered as the top of the knob is only 2mm thick. I was trying to cut through a brand new piece of kiln dried dressed hardwood that was 50mm by 50mm I had a brand new blade and had adjusted the guide bearings and belt tension perfectly and the saw was maxed out in power to cut a 19mm slice. I would definately avoid this model for $1600 I know Carbatec sell a number of other bandsaws that I have not tried but this model is definately poor quality. Also worth noting is the fact that the blades for these units can only be purchased online from Ebay or sent from Carbatec from Brisbane, Melbourne or Sydney so if you are halfway through a project and need a part you will have to wait for it to be sent.