Some saws shield the blade in ptfe welder a casing underneath the saw table and vacuum the dust out directly from there. Others slant the floor of the saw cabinet towards a dust collection port. Many just allow the sawdust to accumulate on the floor under the saw until you clean it out. You will always have some cleaning of the interior to do. Perhaps you won’t wait until the sawdust has totally encased the trunnion gears packing itself up to the bottom of the table top. You will have to connect the saw to a dust collector through its dust port. The suction of the dust collector should be about 350 CFM for a 10” saw and more for a larger saw.

At least one, but preferably two or more access doors should be present, opening into the cabinet of the table saw. The door you will use most frequently will be for cleaning out the interior of sawdust. Another door should give easy access to the motor, trunnion and belts for adjustment and repair. Many table saws provide a removable access panel instead of a second door. That’s fine for occasional motor, arbor, belt and trunnion access but you will need the sawdust door to open and close straightforwardly.

The saw should be sold with a Biesemeyer or similar type fence included in the purchase price. This type of fence locks and aligns itself to a rectangular tube attached to the front of the saw table when you press down on a handle. Fence precision and ease of operation will be critical every time you touch your table saw and so a cheap fence is no bargain. The fence will probably read measurements along a stick-on measuring tape on the top of the front fence rail tube. You will have to carefully adjust the fence for consistent accuracy. Instructions of how to do this should come with the set-up instructions for the saw.

The fence must be aligned so that the front of the blade and the rear of the blade are exactly the same distance from the fence at all settings. Once you have determined that the blade and fence are parallel to each other, you must cut some test boards to correctly set the fence to the scale. Set the fence to exactly 2” on the measuring scale. Rip a test board and measure it. Adjust the fence to the scale by positioning the viewer’s hairline left or right. Rip more boards until you have exact accuracy. The viewer through which you see the tape should be strong in magnification.

Your new saw must have a rip capability equal or wider than the widest wood or plywood you will ever want to rip. Usually, a cabinet saw will have a rip capacity of around 30 inches or 50 inches. A large rip capacity to the right of the blade will require an extension table to support any work piece wider than the cast iron table. Often, this extension table is included with the saw or, otherwise, you can definitely build your own. The fence must have a tube or rail long enough to achieve the maximum width you want to rip.

Since you know that a sheet of plywood measures 48 inches in width and 96 inches in length, I would think that you might want to opt for a 50-inch rip as opposed to the slightly less expensive 30 inch rip capacity. You might be required to rip off only one inch from that sheet of plywood and, while doing that, you will want the plywood to be fully supported. You might want to crosscut a sheet of plywood into two 48” pieces. You also should consider the rip space to the left of the blade: The wider, the better. Sometimes, you might want to undertake tasks that require the fence to be put over to the left side of the blade.