Zapkut folding vertical panel saw

[Shane Drew]

no one purchased one then?

[Gary Birch]

Funny you should ask this Shane, I had a call from them the week before last. While I wasn’t at Sign UK I have looked on their website and it looks a great bit of kit and the price is good too.

Would also be very interested to hear some feedback.

Cheers

Gary

[Nick Monir]

I’m on the same boat! Got a Grafityp catalogue and noticed they were selling them. It’d be an ideal solution for us. Interested to hear some views on them.

Nick.

[Shane Drew]

😳 sorry guys, just bumping this thread. I take it no one finished up buying one then?

I’m told they are selling like hot cakes in the UK… wonder who is buying them then 🙄

[Frank Horner]

Shane,

I guess they didn’t tell you that no one buys hot cakes anymore in the UK :lol1:

Frank

[Phill Fenton]

I’m pretty certain John Singh and Chris Dowd both bought one at the sign show this year. I was very interested in this but bought a Keencut instead.

[Robert Lambie]

i heard they are very good, though i never actually saw them at the show. is zapcut a re-brand of the sawtrax ones? I know these are already or will soon be available in the uk, i looked at buying one of these about 5 years ago but we have almost stopped using acrylic and have a keenkut excalibur for anything cheap like foamex and a 3 metre guilotine for composit board and alluminium etc or i recon we would have went with one. we did look at the large wall saws but our units are too low roofed by a couple of feet to house the one we looked at.
http://www.sawtrax.com/

[Dave Harrison]

Just thought I’d bump this topic as it might be of interest to a few. I went to have a closer look at the ZapKut this morning. On first impressions the build quality is good, (mainly extruded grp,which keeps the weight down.) While it cannot be compared to a proper vertical panel saw it is a fraction of the price and can be folded up and put in the back of a van. I was impressed enough to place an order and with a bit of luck I should have it tomorrow.
Unfortunately I don’t think I will have a chance to play with it until the weekend, but I’ll be sure to put up another post once I’ve cut some material.

Regards

Dave

[Richard Urquhart]

Dave any chance I can take a look when you have time mate?

[Gary Birch]

Dave
Where did you go to view it?

Still very interested in one, I have to go to Leicester in next few weeks and was gonna see if Grafityp had a demo model I could see.

Let me know how you get on.

Cheers

Gary

[Dave Harrison]

Hi Gary

I went to their offices / workshop near Basingstoke.

Rich you’re welcome anytime mate, pop up and have a coffee. . but best wait til next week as TNT seem to have lost it 😕 ( not sure how you can lose a panel saw but there you go ! ! )

[Gary Birch]

Cheers Dave

A little bit far for me to go. Will ring Grafityp and see if they have one there I can take a look at.

Will welcome any feedback though.

Cheers

Gary

[Richard Urquhart]

Dave thanks mate can you drop me a line when your all systems go and I will pop in and see you.
Rich

[Denise Goodfellow]

hey, my first post …. hello everyone 😉

we have one, it didn’t come with a saw, because as the seller said, the customer might already have one, which I can see the point, as it could save you £100+ on the overall price.

The panel where the saw should be bolted on, had/has various holes in it, which we thought might be helpful with mounting the saw… they did not!

The hole in our opinion is too big, the saw almost fell through it. We had to make another mounting plate to bolt on top of the original. It might just be the type of saw we bought (Hitachi)

That’s our only gripe with it, its a good piece of kit, tbh we never fold it away, its there fully erected and used everyday……..

In hindsight, I would ask to for a saw to be supplied with it when ordering and the holes drilled etc, then there should be none of the problems we’ve en counted.

If you do have to buy a saw, make sure its got a bag attached to catch all the dust etc, ours haven`t and I have to hoover it up at the end of everyday. I did not realize it would make so much mess
😀

[Shane Drew]

quote Denise Goodfellow:

hey, my first post …. hello everyone 😉

we have one, it didn’t come with a saw, because as the seller said, the customer might already have one, which I can see the point, as it could save you £100+ on the overall price.

The panel where the saw should be bolted on, had/has various holes in it, which we thought might be helpful with mounting the saw… they did not!

The hole in our opinion is too big, the saw almost fell through it. We had to make another mounting plate to bolt on top of the original. It might just be the type of saw we bought (Hitachi)

That’s our only gripe with it, its a good piece of kit, tbh we never fold it away, its there fully erected and used everyday……..

In hindsight, I would ask to for a saw to be supplied with it when ordering and the holes drilled etc, then there should be none of the problems we’ve en counted.

If you do have to buy a saw, make sure its got a bag attached to catch all the dust etc, ours haven`t and I have to hoover it up at the end of everyday. I did not realize it would make so much mess
😀

Welcome Denise, and thanks for such an informative reply.

[Gavin MacMillan]

A bump to see if there is anymore feedback on these? In particular the ZK10, as we would lose too much wall space with it fitted permanently. Looks good but then these things always do in the nice shiney brochure!

Cheers,

G

[Martin Pearson]

Gavin, what you going to be cutting?? Reason I ask is because with a panel saw you can get a lot of dust, I have a semi fixed wall saw and although it’s a useful bit of kit I wish it would cut a bit cleaner. It does have a dust extraction system but it’s not great and clogs quite easy.

I’ve never used the excalibur type cutters but often think for the work I do they would be a better option.

The other thing to remember with a panel saw is that it will remove a few mm of material so if you cut a 1220 board in half you get 2 just under 610. Not really a big issue but worth remembering.

[Gavin MacMillan]

Hi Martin, mainly cutting composites and some foamboard.

We already use a circular saw on rails with an extraction system. It’s one the main reasons I like the look of this as our saw is top notch and we would not want replace it. I would guess ours will fit this system but would obviously check that if we ever went for it.

Not a fan of the excaliber types myself, I’ve never actually used it but I think it would be too much work for the quantity of boards we cut. At the moment we use our saw on a custom bench we made and it works great but sometimes I think we could be doing things quicker! The main thing that slows us down is when the boards are all random sizes, when they are all the same we stack 2/3 sheets and cut all at once and you can through things quite quickly. Another thread was talking about guillotines, this would be a great option but I think space rules that out!

Cheers,

G

[Martin Pearson]

Gavin, if your cutting a lot of board and multiples then I would agree that the panel saw is probably quite a bit faster, with mine once the guides were set I could cut a few sheets at a time and they all came out exactly the same size but I don’t do as much work now.
The other advantage is that if you have a decent saw and a selection of blades you can cut a wider range of substrates.

If you have made yourself a custom bench for cutting couldn’t you make yourself something that would be just as good as a vertical saw frame??

Probably right to exclude the guillotine as an option if space is an issue as it will take up more space than a vertical saw and be difficult to move.

[John Singh]

Pros and Cons

At the show they had a DeWalt saw attached
I bought a Bosch saw and found there was some adjustments to the holes that needed to be done when mounting the saw. This was nothing major and very simple to do since it was only Dibond I had to drill through and if I made a mess of it, it would be simple enough to get another piece of Dibond and make another

To operate properly you need to attach the hose from a vacuum cleaner and plug in the vacuum cleaner as well to provide suction. The hose should be quite long to enable a full downward stroke. A short hose may restrain the downward stroke

If you do have the space it is better to leave fully open for quick use
It is quite sturdy and stable when fully opened

Actual operation:

Actual cutting of large 8 x 4’s horizontally is where the true test comes
It does cut very well but you may have to pull board slightly towards you just to ease over dome head coach bolts.

On the whole its not a bad bit of kit
With a triple chip blade , which I recommend you buy from Zapkut, it cuts Foamex and Di-bond nice and clean.
MDF and ply are a breeze to cut

It is much safer than trying to cut 8 x 4’s the old way whatever the material

What modifications would I make to it

Some kind of strip like Velcro off the roll but slightly thicker to be applied to the bottom rail which would allow material to slide over coach bolt heads

Coach bolt heads could be ground down a little

It is great that you can fold it away and it takes very little space up which is quite remarkable when you think it can handle 8 x 4 sheets

[Robert.Simpson.]

We bought one about a year ago and found the same problems regarding the coach bolts.

We did try and get on with it, but its just to flimsy we find. Its an ideal piece of kit for shop fitters but for signmakers who can working to tight tolerances I just couldn’t see it performing, so its why I have decided to sell it when I get round to it.

One of the major problems we had with it was the adjustment of the bottom rail, you could never seem to get it dead straight. I would say at the best of times when you cutting a 4ft sheet vertically you could expect to be 3 / 4mm out.

Robert