00:00Hey, welcome to the shop. Today we're taking a look at Evolution's newest mitering chop saw. This is the S14 MCS and it has all of their new Evo Max features incorporated into it, including a shadow line so you can see right where your cut's gonna be. It has an intelligent motor that will optimize your blade speed to give you long blade life no matter how hard you're cutting.
00:22It has their newest Cermet carbide Evo Max blade that's been independently tested to make over 3,500 cuts through 4 inch steel tubing. The saw head pivots rather than the fence so your material's always facing the same direction no matter what angle you're cutting at. We'll do a deep dive into the saw and go over everything that you might want to know and if you want to look at more specs or pick one up for yourself, there's a link in the description to the product page.
00:47I have mine mounted on their folding stand. It takes less than a minute for me to roll it out here. One handle has some gas shocks to help lift it up and I have a full cut station with material supports that extend out, end stops for repeated lengths and things like that.
01:05Let's start off by looking at the actual cut quality. I'm gonna go heavy right out of the gate with some half inch thick flat bar and then we'll cut some thin stuff too.
01:17That ate through there in a hurry. It's cool to the touch as soon as the cut is done and there's basically no burr on there and that's really kind of the opposite of what happens with an abrasive saw, right?
01:41With an abrasive saw it would have taken about four times as long. It would have been really hot right after and you'd have a big burr to get rid of.
01:48So that's really the advantage of the cold cut technology with this type of saw.
01:53Now I'm going to move to some thinner walled square tubing. Kind of some smaller stuff and I want to make that miter cut.
01:59And it's a one-handed adjustment for the angle so I can loosen that and I can pivot the saw head either direction and my material continues to face side to side so I don't take up too much real estate here in the shop.
02:12It's cool to the touch as soon as the cut is made. Cut quality once again really nice. On the back edge there's a tiny little burr there. You wouldn't need to remove that in most cases but if you did it would be really fast to do.
02:31Let's talk a little bit more about the mitering function on here and why that can be really beneficial compared to a traditional chop saw.
02:38See with a regular chop saw the head is always sitting straight and the fence itself moves and it usually only moves in one direction.
02:47So what that means is when you have a long piece of material like this either the material has to swing way out across the whole room or you have to rotate your saw to be able to keep the material straight.
03:03In this case the material is always going straight which is nice because I have a long skinny workspace and so I can just loosen this and pivot the saw head and then go back straight whenever I need to.
03:19The base has degree markings and it can move 46 degrees in either direction.
03:25It has this knob right here to lock in your angle and it also has stops at your common angles like 0 degrees square, 45 degrees, 30, 22 and a half so you can easily get those tightened in and locked down.
03:43The ability to miter in both directions is especially helpful when you are making frames or miter cuts out of angled material.
03:51See let me show you.
04:07Now if this were square tubing I could just flip the tubing over and make my opposite angle cut.
04:13However with angled material it's really difficult to fixture this and have it sitting in a safe way in a traditional chop saw.
04:21With this saw I can just pivot it around the other way and make my other angled cut.
04:27As soon as it's cut it's cool to the touch so you can work with it.
04:44Nice smooth surface not much burr on there.
04:48Alright let's go ahead and check the angle of this cut.
04:52It's pretty good.
04:58Another adjustment that they've made really easy is the position of the blade front to back so that you can hit the right part of your material and make it all the way through on miter cuts.
05:06So all you do is loosen right here and then you can pull this out and it will lock into one of three places and then secure it.
05:14Take a look at my favorite new feature on here which is this shadow line that shows exactly where your blade is going to cut beforehand.
05:22Now if you don't have this you have to pull the blade clear down to the stock and sometimes it can be difficult to see exactly where your kerf is going to be.
05:32To use it all I have to do is pull the handle slightly and it will hit a stop before the motor engages.
05:36The light turns on revealing the shadow line and then I can slide to line my markup exactly without having to bring the blade all the way down.
05:45And the nice thing about a shadow line is that it doesn't have to be calibrated like a laser might because it's shining directly past the blade so it's always going to be accurate.
05:55Take a closer look at the clamping mechanisms.
05:57Everything clamps against these back fences.
06:00There are two sliding clamps to hold material back against the fence here and they both ride on this heavy duty rail.
06:07And the height of this rail can be adjusted right here and locked into place to accommodate different sizes of material.
06:16These are quick release clamps so you can drop this down and just slide it up and tighten right away.
06:21Then loosen it a little bit, flip this back, and move the clamp out of the way to remove your material.
06:27There's also one vertical clamp and it's also a quick release style.
06:31And there are five different positions that you can move this clamp to and it just binds in place so you can position it wherever you need it or remove it entirely just that easily.
06:42Now while we're back here, take a look at the fence.
06:44They've added a whole lot of additional ribbing on this version of the mitering chop saw to increase the stiffness so that this can't deflect or bend.
06:52Now what you can see right here on the end of the fence is a steel bar and it runs all the way through the length of the fence on this newest version of the mitering chop saw
06:59to keep it from flexing it all out by the blade.
07:02Now three of these V-blocks are included to install on all of the different clamps for holding the round stock.
07:09Or they can be used to position square stock up at a 45 degree angle, which is actually a little bit easier on your blade for straight cuts.
07:26Now another update with this latest version of the mitering chop saw is their intelligent motor.
07:31And this monitors the blade speed throughout your cut to make sure it's at the optimal speed for blade life depending on how hard you're cutting.
07:40And they've found that this can extend the life of just about any blade by around 30%.
07:45On top of the benefits to blade life, the intelligent motor also has a soft start.
07:49And this will keep you from having a spike in the current out of your circuit and prevent you from tripping your circuit breaker.
07:56And it also has a blade break that brings the speed down more slowly.
07:59So listen for that gradual start and then that faster stop.
08:04Now the blade that comes on this latest version has also been upgraded to their top of the line Evomax blade.
08:23This is a Ceramate carbide tooth blade rather than tungsten carbide.
08:27And this gives you a long life. It's made in Japan, optimized for low vibration and long blade life.
08:34And they had a lab independently test this to see how many cuts they could get out of these.
08:39They found that they were able to get 3,500 cuts out of 4 inch diameter tubing that's a 1 8th inch thick wall.
08:47So it holds up really well. I mean you compare that to an abrasive saw, it's a night and day difference.
08:52Now with any Ceramate carbide blade you're going to see a little bit more sparking and you might have noticed that on some of the test cuts.
08:58However the cuts are still cold to the touch right after you finish them.
09:02Really nice finish on them and the blades last a long time.
09:06They also have an Evomax blade for aluminum. This is available separately.
09:10Changing the blades is pretty easy.
09:12So right behind the fence there's an Allen wrench here and this has been designed to fit every screw that you might need to loosen here on the saw.
09:20There's a push button to lock the arbor from rotating on the motor.
09:30The aluminum blade is a 100 tooth tungsten carbide blade and it's designed with geometry specific for that softer aluminum material.
09:40Just like the steel the cut was cool to the touch right when we were done.
09:58Not much of a burr on there at all.
10:00Now it's nice and square in both directions.
10:06If you want to check out the full specs and learn more about this saw and the rest of their new Evomax lineup I'll put a link to the website down in the description below.
10:16Thanks a ton for tuning in. We'll see you next time.
10:19See you next time.
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