24-Inch Bridge Tile Saw Qep 83200

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Rating:	5 (Excellent) 4 (Good) 3 (Average) 2 (Poor) 1 (Very Poor)
Summary:
Review:

Rips tile 24 inches square and 18 inches diagonal; powerful 1-1/2-horsepower, 18-inch diagonal motor; Linear, diagonal, and 45-degree angle cuts; Adjustable leg for setup on uneven surfaces; accepts 8-inch blade with standard 5/8-inch arbor; Motor trolley unit, rides on six ball bearings for improved cutting. Great features and a great price make this bridge tile saw the right choice for you.

I have this product and I am very please from his water pump feater.

Read the reviews, and this seemed the choice for serious amateur needing to do about $4K of 15-inch Italian porcelein tile on the diagonal. I haven't cut tile yet, but thought I'd give my receipt and assembly feedback.

o UPS was terrible. The guy who delivered it--this is a big, heavy box--didn't use a hand truck. I'm sure they dropped it repeatedly because when I opened it, a full width/depth shelf that sits part way down the legs was seriously bent in both axes. It's tough stuff; I couldn't bend it back without making a total mess of it. The shelf sits upright along the back side of the box--fills the whole box height and width, so there was no crush space, which is likely a good thing. The big styrofoam end pieces on either end of the saw were crushed and broken and it took a lot of vacuuming to clean up a million pieces of sticky styrofoam. I think the shelf served as protection for the bridge, so good for QEP and bad on Amazon/UPS.

o I called QEP and explained what happened, and the first thing the customer service person said was, email me the invoice and your mailing address and we'll send you a replacement. Is that cool or what? So mark that down for 6-stars. You just gotta love and trust a vendor that'll absorb the hit, especially since I'll bet Amazon plays hardball on pricing.

o I'm basically impressed with the saw and the fit and finish. It's not a use-it-8-hours-a-day $1500 professional version, but I can imagine happily tiling everything up to and including my casket with it. I got out the straight edge and checked the bridge and table surface for damage from UPS, and all seems ok. I'm impressed how tightly the saw runs in the bridge. No play that I can feel. I need to cut tile (not pavers), so other comments about lack of cutting depth don't matter to me.

o Since I have a lot of repetitive cuts, I'll use my Bosch sliding dual mitre saw to make some jig pieces that I'll clamp in place. The angle and bevel guages on the saw seem fine, nicer than I expected actually. It's obviously not as precise as the Bosch--which can slice a fly's wing--but the settings seem very repeatable and the various knobs for tightening feel smooth and progressive, which is what really counts.

o The laser assembles easily but requires full adjustment in rotation (you can make the laser line perpendicular to the cut line if you want) and sliding horizontally perpendicular to the blade. I'm not sure how much I'll need to trust it since I'd prefer to just clamp an extra piece of ipe or something hard and straight to really lock in the tile piece for repetitive cuts.

o There were some comments about the wheels being rickety. Not sure if QEP read the comments and made a change, but there are some pretty big wheels that you can clamp onto the legs either near the floor (to wheel the table setup around) or up a ways (to wheel the folded up setup off to storage--like one of those rolling carry-ons).

o I liked the built-in leveler in one of the legs. You turn a knob and an insert in the leg goes in an out. Seems good enough to prevent rocking.

o I did turn it on and it was smooth and quiet. I plan to buy a good blade since there's a no-name in the box. They really have no choice at this price point but to put anything in there so Joe User can open the box and start cutting.

I bought this wet saw thinking it'd be like every other bridge saw I've used, where the saw can be pulled across but also raises and lowers to accommodate for cutting different-sized materials. Not so with this one. The available cutting spaces is only 1-1/2", which is fine for tiles but not so much for folks with 2-1/4" bricks. I've found a workaround, though. If you replace the (6mm) bolts which hold the bridge onto the table with longer bolts (a _minimum_ of 50mm, go for 75mm fully-threaded bolts (you'll need four) if you can find them) and add a few 10mm nuts to allow you to raise and lower the bridge, you can increase the cutting space to 2-1/4" and beyond. You'll lose the angular cutting functionality when the saw is lifted, but that's a small price to pay.

I have nothing new to add about the wheels, which are misplaced and don't work very well.

The legs, fold down and are anchored in place by angle brackets which attach over little buttons. They're difficult to get on and off, and even worse, when transporting the saw, the brackets hang down and make it difficult to lower the saw onto the ground.

In order to unfold the legs, you have to rest the saw on its side, however there is no rubber bumper to prevent the weight of the saw from doing damage to the stuff on its side. Also, once the leg is extended, you have to pivot the weight of the entire saw on the two extended legs, and I'm fairly positive that it's not going to survive this for too many uses.

I had the same issue with the pump... tapping it doesn't even restart it sometimes... I have to disassemble the thing while the saw is running, and push on the pump's internal paddles like I'm priming a flywheel. Considering that it's only a 60gph fountain pump, you might be able to find a $10 submersible pump to replace this one.

Finally, the parts that house the 8" non-standard blade are fully detachable from the saw's motor. I wouldn't recommend running this saw without its protective housing, however you _can_ order the 10" housing as a replacement part for QEP's larger wet saw from QEP, providing you with the ability to use a standard 10" blade instead.

All in all, the saw, as delivered, is junk for my purposes, however with only a few modifications it's equivalent to QEP's larger, more expensive bridge saws. Since you're probably not as desperate as I was to find an inexpensive masonry saw, I'd recommend that you find a different saw for cutting your bricks.

We purchased this saw to make dead accurate rips on 36" tile. It failed. We tried crosscuts on 24" tile and had blade runout of almost a 1/4" This might be a fine tolerance for a DIY'er or a client who is not picky. We have zero joint lines and this machine ruined several hundred dollars in tile before we stopped the operator. I tried several blades, none inexpensive and had the runout problem with all. It seems that the arbor bends the further the saw gets into a cut.

My husband and I are DIYers. We tackled our first tiling project ever with this saw. In our kitchen, I wanted porcelain tiles laid on a diagonal, and the tiles I selected are sixteen inch square. This means a lot of cutting, but this meant a big saw if we did not want to have to flip the tile over halfway through the cut. This wet tile saw made cutting tiles like cutting through butter. It has great guides, very stable, adjustable legs for uneven surfaces, does not spray a ton of water everywhere, and simple to use. It had a little assembly out of the box which took us about 45 minutes. My only complaint is with the instruction manual...it is not very clear. I really did not want to spend this much money on a saw, but boy was it worth it! I highly recommend it!