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Diamond Laser 3000 XL Saw

Manufacturer: Diamond Tech
Category: Home Improvement

List Price: ~~$499.99~~
Buy New: $449.99
You Save: $50.00 (10%)

Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars

1 reviews
Sales Rank: 238788

Media: Misc.
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No

ASIN: B000IGCAPY

Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Features:

•	Durable recirculating water pump with ultra-plus filtration system eliminates messy bottle reservoir
•	Built-in target light shines directly on your work
•	Extra-large table for support of large pieces
•	Powerful 1/7 hp motor cuts 2-3 times faster than other saws
•	Easy blade installation, tracking and tension

Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
The DL3000 XL is the most operator friendly band saw on the market today. It has all the features; quality, performance and value that has made the DL3000 one of the best selling band saws in stained glass. Plus, a new durable recirculating water pump with an ultra-plus filtration system to keep your machine running clean. The new built-in target light, shines directly on your work to eliminate annoying shadows. All these features come nicely packaged in our Diamond Tech signature red color that makes DTI products standout above the rest.

Customer Reviews:

3 out of 5 stars

I wish I could have seen one before I bought it . . . July 19, 2007
Skip Thomsen (Hilo, HI United States)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful

Just to lend some credibility to this review, let me say that I've been a stained-glass artist for over 30 years and I've been using a glass bandsaw since 1993. My first and only other saw was a DTI Diamond Laser 1000, quite a title for such a humble tool. The 1000 was DTI's first attempt at a diamond bandsaw for cutting glass, and it was a dandy tool.

I'm also a machinist, so I know how a power tool should be designed and built.

The only reason I decided to retire my old saw in favor of the 3000XL is that the new one had a much larger table and a better method of getting cooling water to the blade. Other than those two "improvements" over the 1000, the 3000 is nearly identical. The 3000 also has a different (as opposed to better) method of tensioning the blade.

OK, out of the box I noticed that the 3000 was definitely not built with the same care and integrity as the old saw. The flashy "3000XL" sign on the front of the case is a paper-thin plastic sticker, applied crooked and with lots of ugly bubbles under it. Well, that's only cosmetic, but it gives one an idea of what's ahead.

The table, which as I said is the biggest reason I bought the saw, is a joke. The old table is a beautifully machined piece of aluminum, dead flat as it should be. The 3000 table is a rough, cheap casting and the top is just the cast surface with paint on it. The table is about 1/16" out of flat, with the low spot being where the blade comes through the table and at the front of the table. This means you will need to be ever so careful to avoid putting any pressure on your workpiece, especially if it is a delicate cut, or it will break.

There is an "alignment screw" at the front edge of the table that's supposed to keep the table flat on both sides of the cut in the table though which you remove the blade. Well, the threaded hole and the countersink for the screw head are so far our of alignment that tightening the screw even a little bit warps the table even more than it is already.

The hole in the table right where the blade goes through is so big that if you're cutting a tiny piece of glass, it can fall right through and land on the lower blade wheel, possibly getting lodged between the blade and the wheel. That hole needn't have been any wider than the slot in the table.

Moving right along, the cooling-water delivery system works well, once you figure a way to connect the plastic tubing to the too-small fitting on the pump. (I made a tiny clamp.) Well, it anyway works well to keep the blade cool. It also sprays right in your face as you're operating the saw. This is with the delivery nozzle turned down to as low as possible and still keep a flow to the blade. The water that sprays in your face is thrown off of the left side of the lower wheel and the blade between the left side of the table and the frame of the saw.

Speaking of cooling water, there are some useless holes drilled and threaded into the groves in the table. According to the manual, they are there so you can screw down the equally useless little miter gauge for straight or angle cuts. Just toss the miter gauge in the trash because you'll never use it. But then fill the holes in the table that are not over the coolant catch-tray or the cooling water will drip all over your workbench. Clever. I used some silicone adhesive to plug the holes.

Nit-picky? Sure, but this is supposed to be an improvement over the old saw built in 1993.

While I'm nit-picking, it doesn't seem that it would have been so difficult to make the wheels run true. After all, we're not talking a huge bandsaw here. (Actually, the wheels on my shop bandsaws run dead true.) There is enough runout and wheel wobble that at the highest speed the saw shakes. Not much, but enough to dispel any notion that this is a well-crafted tool. Good basic design, but a less-that-good execution of that design.

One more nit-pick: The door that covers the wheels is warped enough that it misses closing by inch at the bottom, leaving a gap for water to splash into the housing. Probably doesn't hurt anything, but it's tacky.

I will have to say that the tiny led that illuminates the work area (a circle of bluish light about one inch in diameter, but right at the blade) works well. Again, the way it's put together and the components used are really cheesy, but it works.

The whole say reminds me of tools I used to see come from China 20 years ago. The rough castings, the funky assembly, and all. The case that houses the motor and drive is nicely built, but hey, it's a leftover from the 1993 model that was great.

Oh, one more gripe and then I'll go on to some fixes. DTI makes a big deal out of how quiet the motor is. And it is. But touch a piece of glass to the blade for your first cut, and all of a sudden the noise level is near-frightening! That thin cast table resonates the noise of the blade on the glass so loud that it really is obnoxious. Twice as loud as my old saw. Maybe more than that, because I never even noticed the noise of the old saw.

The fixes, if you are so inclined: First thing I did was to run the table over a large stationary belt sander to make it flat. That took a long time. Actually even before that I straightened it initially by placing it over a couple of " thick blocks and pressing down in the middle (with the table upside down. You would need to be really careful with this operation or you'll break the table. It is very thin!

After the table was dead flat (well, close enough), I sanded it to 220 grit to get it nice and smooth. Next comes that so-called "alignment screw" hole. I firmly clamped the table onto my drill-press table with the hole directly centered under the chuck. Then I used a countersink bit and brought it down into the old oblong hole gently until it cleaned up the mess and left a new, true countersink.

Then I decided to do something about the noise, so I cut some " thick wooden blocks to fit into each of the recesses on the underside of the table. I glued them into the recess with a liberal amount of silicone glue. What a difference that made!

The last table fix was to get rid of that huge hole where the blade goes through. I chamfered the existing hole, top and bottom. Then I placed the table upside down on a flat bench with a piece of plastic wrap under the hole area. I mixed up about a teaspoon of JB Weld Aluminum and carefully worked it into the hole from the bottom. Let cure overnight and then I used my shop bandsaw to cut the blade groove into the JB Weld patch. I made the groove the same width as it was, but all the way into (but not through the whole patch) the JB Weld. A quick sanding of the top surface and the table looked as it should have looked from the factory.

I made a small aluminum splash guard and screwed it to the left side of the table from underneath. It covers the area between the left side of the table and the saw frame. The table should have been made to cover that area to begin with.

Well, a day's work and my new saw now works as well as my old one did, plus I have the bigger table and the better coolant system I wanted.

Had I known then what I know now, would I have bought the saw? NO. I would have made a new table and coolant system for my old saw. If I didn't already have another saw, would I buy this one? That's a tough call, since there is precious little else out there. The Gryphon saw is all plastic and has two huge posts that would get seriously in the way of a lot of the cuts I do. One thing I would do is to not buy another saw sight-unseen. But I live in Hawaii and that's the way we buy almost everything here that is in any way esoteric enough that you won't find it in stock locally. Had I seen this saw before ordering it, I would not have bought it.

Sad, because I recently wrote a long letter to DTI in praise of their old 1000 saw. I bought the new one based on that experience, so there's a lesson to be learned there.