ansgri
Joined 17 years ago
Joined 17 years ago
Very much depends on available material. If you do have decent square boards or plan on mostly using thick plywood, then yes, you can make a lot of practical stuff easily with miter saw and an improvised track saw, or just a real track saw. Otherwise, you'll want to have a jointer.
The necessity of a table saw is a controversial topic, a lot of guides position it as the only saw you'll need, and while technically that may be true, it's way less safe and an overkill for simple projects. Also, expensive in both money and space, since this is a tool you definitely don't want the cheapest and smallest version of. So I agree with you here. If I had the current experience, I'd get a decent track saw instead of the miter saw, more versatile.
I'd prioritize a router table made with a basic wired trim router and a cheap adjustable baseplate, with dust extraction.
If you’re doing mostly digital circuits, I’d consider a very basic scope for dealing with power supplies and PWMs (but skip the cheapest single channel ones, you’ll want the second channel very soon), and consider getting a separate logic analyzer that can decode common protocols on several channels. You won’t need that if you just work with popular modules though.
If said tool was sold by a company with reputation for long-term stable support and a track record to match, I'd be willing to consider it. And nowadays such a company may support 100s of small tools, each $10/year or so for which you buy security patches and adaptation to OS/API changes. The problem is, as always, getting the initial fame.
This model appears to exist in music production software, with effect plugins.