Cutting Melamine Coated Particle Core Board with the Festool TS 55 Plunge Saw 

One of the features of the Festool Plunge Saw is that it fits on the guide rail and can be moved easily along its length.    On the TS55, there are two adjustment nuts that allows you to tighten the saw on the guide strip. Tighter means that the saw will move with less side-to-side movement. That's good.    I adjust it as tight as I can and still have smooth movement.
	She rehearses the move along the rail's length. The movement is smooth, but we can make it smoother.    Andrea will spray the guide rail
Here is the "dry" lubricant we used. It sprays a light mist that can be rubbed off quickly. The resulting guide rail is amazingly slick and the saw literally glides along the length. It contains no silicone so it is "wood safe."    "Table-Top Lubricant" is available from Rockler and Woodcraft and most other woodworker supply store.
	The new rails have two green strips to help the saw glide easily. The spray still helps quite a bit.
The arrow points to the suction hose holder (P/N 487 072). It is meant to be placed in the corner of the vacuum and hold the hose when not in use. I have made better use of it as a hose and cord swivel to keep them both from dragging during the cutting.    Where it is located in this shop allows the saw to be moved back and forth on the guide rail without any pull from the hose or cord — that is all good.    It works so well here, that we will mount one coming down from the ceiling and at the mid point of the table. That would be great.
	It doesn't take long for Andrea to make the sample cuts.  She carefully marks each group so that she can know where each blade's results are.
For each blade, she made 5 cuts. the Three at the right are simply straight cuts with the blade set to go into the substrate by 1/4".    The #4 cut is with the blade set at the shallowest and an attempt to make a "scoring" cut. The #5 cut is a combined cut of scoring and then final.
	This two-inch section shows some minor chipping on the 4th kerf position. The near side is the "first" with number two and three on the underside. All underside cuts were perfect and showed no chipping.    The chipping on the 4th edge is unacceptable for finished shelf and cabinet fronts. Note, this degree of chipping was not along the length of the kerf but just where Andrea or I caused some minor movement of the saw — "operator error" so to speak.
This section is more representative of the entire length with very minor chip out on the fourth edge. This length is acceptable.
	This view shows the "scoring" cut as well as the cut with two passes — scoring and then full cut. It is virtually chip out free.  If there were no other way to get perfect cuts, I would consider using scoring cuts. Fact is, we will find that there is a better blade than this for this melamine particle core material.