What’s the issue with Kapex?
Motor windings burning up. There were a few theories, Kapex was designed for 230v, but was overworked on 120v. Another thought was it might be jobsite generator power. Or Kapex wasnt designed for the rigors of the NA jobsite.
Festool was warrantying some of them, but I believe you had to ship your heavy saw to them, which cost a fortune, and you were without your $1500 saw for however long it took for them to fix it. A lot of owners of burned out saws were rightly pissed off. Several owners had the same problem multiple times.
Not sure what the current status of Kapex is and its been a while since I read up on it, so I might have some details wrong. A search on the Festool Owners Group website will give you more current info.
Basically, the issue with the Kapex was what scooby074 said.
The motors were burning up, and letting out the smoke, some before the warrantee was up, but many after the warrantee had expired.
To get the saws repaired, since Festool doesn’t use independent, and more potentially local repair shops, required shipping the saws back to Festool, and if not under warrantee, paying for the repair service snd parts, which could wind up costing a few hundred dollars or more, and which was also a pain in the @ss, since a miter saw is a large heavy object, that is way more costly and annoying to ship than something like a jigsaw.
Most miter saws from major “respectable” tool manufacturers have motors that could easily last thru several owners, over decades, even in fairly constant use.
Milwaukee, Bosch, Makita, Hitachi, Dewalt, etc. probably have saws from the 1980s that are still working fine.
If these other saws broke, it was usually a smaller and possibly cheaper component that breaks, like the switch, or a failed electrical connection, or brushes, or a capacitor, or the cord.
With Festool, the saws were routinely failing due to the stator or rotor windings burning up, and those parts are expensive to replace.
There were also issues with the Kapex saws getting stuff jammed in the blade guards destroying the blade guards, but that was a less problematic issue for most users, and has turned up in the past with other saw models from brands like Dewalt or maybe Makita.
As far as why the issue happened with Festool, my general opinion is Festool, at least back when the Kapex was first released, didn’t know how to properly engineer a motor, or were getting their motors from someone else, and was not properly choosing the motors.
The Festool motors seem to run cool, even better than some other manufacturers like Hilti from a couple decades ago.
The Festool motors however in their older saw were under powered, especially when compared to older motors from manufacturers like Milwaukee, whose saws from even a decade before the Festool saws were released, tended to be higher powered, with higher speeds.
I have no clue on the current status of Festool motors, especially since Festool has been focusing on brushless motors and cordless tools.
The other potential cause of the Festool motor failures might have been the wiring insulation coating used on the motor windings.
Whatever the case, it took maybe a decade plus minus for people to stop reporting the issues, and Festool sort of left a lot of purchasers screwed over.
As for the Carvex jigsaw, the first generation had to be redesigned because the bkade guide system could actually cause jigsaw blades to melt if I recall correctly, and might have had other issues.
The second generation I think was still having issues with blades getting clamped wonkily, and possibly not remaining at a proper plumb angle in use.
For whatever reason, the Blade clamp from the older Festool Trion jigsaw, which works excellently, wasn’t used on the Carvex.
