Visions of things and the actual designing and building them are two very different things. Having the capital to design and build a product can be a real strain on a smaller company. Time to market with a small staff is going to be a long time and there is no way to know if the new product is going to pay for its development and upfront costs or start making a bottom line profit within a reasonable period.
So if shopsmith did look at a new updated tool could we afford it? Right now I could go to the woodcraft store and get a nice bandsaw for about a $1000. This one comes to mind:
https://www.woodcraft.com/products/laguna-14-12-bandsaw
Now take a look at the shopsmith offering:
http://www.shopsmith.com/ownersite/catalog/bandsaw.htm
So for $580 you get a bandsaw that would take a total redesign and come to market at the same price range. It would also need to be light enough to put on your shopsmith. Well maybe you could grow it by a few pounds but not much.
Right now you can see that the two areas for greater capacity are height/depth of cut. The height issue could be done but not without a major amount of strengthening of the body of the bandsaw, however the depth of cut means larger wheels or multiple wheels. Would a 14" wheel even ever fit? Remember there is a fixed distance from the mounting to the shaft that powers it. My guess is no it would not. Well that leaves the addition of a third wheel with a lot of space issues or some sort of gear or belt drive system. The complexity just went sky high.
I can see why shopsmith is unlikely to go this way, a lot of technical challenges and development costs to even match the cost of a market full of bandsaws.
Even just improving the existing bandsaw would be expensive and would result in higher cost, and it would be unlikely to get existing owners to pony up for a new model to replace our existing ones. The powerpro did that and a lot of us could see a worth to it.
A survey I did not long ago had about 120 of us here on the forum having taken the plunge to the powerpro. Now we know a lot more people have purchased them but this being a forum dedicated to shopsmith and 40K + members that is a pretty small number. Yes I'm sure a lot here want one but coming up with the upgrade money is not easy. Like wise it shows that as a shopsmith owner we don't necessarily spend money easily. How many owners still have a 500 but would very much like to have a 520? Again that is likely a large number but just because we can upgrade doesn't mean we will. I'm pretty sure shopsmith knows this so how do you make new or updated additions that will surely sell? For the most part you don't.
Anyway that is how I see it.
Ed
