A disclaimer - This is my first bandsaw....and hopefully it will last MANY years! So it will take me a while to get the setup and operation tuned up and really get the most out of the machine.
About 2 months ago I purchased a showroom model (previous green rather than current grey style) Felder FB-510 from Stefan at Felder NSW. They opened on Saturday to see me, negotiated the price and offered very good service. The saw was delivered to Newcastle within 2 weeks and they helped me drag it into my garage and wire up the euro plug and get it set up. Due to accidentally bringing the wrong length blade we couldn't run it on the day and the technician just ran me through the operation of the machine without a blade. They overnight shipped the correct blade (a 1/2" carbon blade from henry bros).
Positives:
The saw is a big machine and its heavy but the wheel kit makes it easy to move around.
I like the fence because it is able to be quickly changed to a flat lying down style (really convenient on thin pieces) or to an upright traditional fence (this is standard on the felder line of sliders etc as well I think). I didn't buy the extension rails for just the bandsaw, but if I later get a felder slider or slider/spindle moulder than I'll get an extension table to share around.
I now have the saw running a 25mm Lenox Woodmaster B 1.3tpi? Bi-metal blade recommended by both felder and henry bros, and the FB-510 tracks and tensions the blade up without a problem. With the 4hp single phase motor, this thing doesn't even blink at red mahogany, blue gum etc. I took Stefan's advice 'Hobbyists feed way too slow, cut the damn thing!' and I would have to say the saw and blade seem happier when you are really tearing through the material.
The 2 dust ports do a pretty reasonable job, but Bandsaws are pretty tough to get good dust collection.
Felder provides good support, I found the table tilt rod sheared off. I called felder and sent them a photo, they had me a replacement part delivered within a week and while the original part was clearly a poor design, the new part was off the latest model and the design weakness had been engineered out. I was impressed by this.
Negatives:
Unfortunately because I'm renting I can't bolt the machine down, with my not very flat concrete, the wheel kit it sits on at the back and the fiddly adjustment of the other two feet, I'm getting some vibration in the machine. I think this could be rectified in the future by bolting it to the concrete, I just can't do it at the moment.
It doesn't like to do a quick start/stop/restart. When you start the machine it must draw a lot of current, I'm using 1.5mm2 cable which I'm noticing gets warm and flexible after start up. If you then stop the machine within 30sec or so which uses the electric brake, it heats the motor up more and the fan has not had time to disipate any heat. Trying to quickly restart it again often it just won't start for about 1-2 minutes. Its running off a 32A breaker and I'll see if changing to 2.5mm2 extension cable fixes it, this might be a matter of the warm small diameter cable adding too much resistance? I'll change this part of the review if I get it fixed.
Conclusion:
I really like this saw, I think I will like it even better as my skill increases and I learn to tune it properly. I don't regret stepping up from the N4400 as it is bigger, seems more robust and laughs at a 1" blade when that is pushing the capacity of its little brother. If I was going to push the vertical resaw capacity than I'd get the FB-610 or Minimax S500P, Gabbetts gave me a demo of one that was setup and tuned very well running a lenox carbide resaw blade and it was just awesome, but I'm more than happy with the FB-510 for my usage.
