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A practical upshot of this is that Simon and his colleagues regularly need to cut large sheets of man-made board. "We were increasingly finding our table saw inadequate," said Simon. "Boards can be up to 25mm thick: manoeuvring a large sheet of that thickness through the table saw was awkward to say the least, and it was difficult to get a decent level of accuracy."

Simon knew that a high quality vertical panel saw was the answer. Researching the market he found a clear choice: cheaper saws with fixed heads, which require a large operating area, as the workpiece must be passed through the machine when cutting, or exceedingly expensive machines.