Drove in late last night to knock out a quick project. Need to break down a board. Go to the miter saw, see it red tagged. OK… I’ll just use the table saw. Get out the sled, setup a cut block. Pull the main power switch paddle. Nothing. Pop it on and off a couple of times, waiting a few seconds. Still nothing at all. This has happened to be before. Walk over to the other Sawstop. Repeat process, same result. This hasn’t happened before. It’s basic stuff, and I’ve used these saws many times. Skim the Wiki page. Made sure the power switch on the side was in the correct position, even toggle it a couple of times to be sure. Repeat process on both systems. I see at least one saw plugged in, I think. Check the breaker box, everything seems fine. Pack everything back up and take it out to the truck, end my session early, drive back home.
What am I doing wrong? Did the process change somehow? Did I miss something obvious?
When I say “nothing” I mean literally nothing at all happened. No lighting. No sounds. Nothing at all happened, as if the unit was not receiving power. I even went around and turned the planer and the jointer on for a few moments to make sure there wasn’t some bigger problem. They functioned fine.
really sorry to hear about that experience. That sounds pretty frustrating.
This has happened to me in the past when one of the cabinet doors was open. Either the service hatch on the left side or the main big door on the right side.
Sometimes dust can get stuck in the latch and prevent it from closing properly.
As for the miter saw, there is a DeWalt that is up and running. It is on the opposite side of the shop from the miter station until we can make some adjustment to the miter stand for the DeWalt to fit properly.
I used the same process I have for years. I walk up, glance at the saw for anything noticeably wrong (red tag, missing saw blade, etc), then flip the large red “PUSH TO STOP / PULL TO START” button. (I always think of that as the paddle switch). The lights will blink red while the saw does a POST and then after a few moments go solid green. At that point I put my work on and engage the smaller power button to actually turn on the saw.
But in this case, I pulled the large red switch and nothing happened.
As indicated in my original post, I figured they can’t both be messed up in same way so I checked the wiki. I saw note of checking the power switch on the side. I checked both, both were set to on. I toggled them off, and then back on (even though the text was small and hard to read). In both cases no change after checking that switch. I also check to see if they were plugged in, to extent I could, and checked status of breaker.
The cabinet door sounds like a reasonable cause, I’ll scope it next time I am in the shop and update wiki after I have some hands on with it.
From your description, you have the switches backwards. You turn on the small switch first, let the saw complete the start up sequence. You use the paddle switch to turn the blade on and off.
I’m reading this thinking… “Duh, think back man. Yeah, that’s how it works. Obviously. What were you thinking?” It’s been a couple months, used it a ton of times, never happened before. But must have been the ultimate brain fart to get them backwards like that. How embarrassing.
Regardless, I did learn something new. I’ll check it out because a few people said the door thing happened to them, I’d never heard of this and it wasn’t in the wiki, so I’ll add it even if the ultimate problem here was my own silly mistake.
I’m reading this thinking… “Duh, think back man. Yeah, that’s how it works. Obviously. What were you thinking?” It’s been a couple months, used it a ton of times, never happened before. But must have been the ultimate brain fart to get them backwards like that. How embarrassing.