I'll second that. There are lots of things that "the internet" has declared "necessary", but you can't prove it by me.
I took it out of the box and put it together. The stand goes inside the casting, not outside. The directions were quite unclear. About thirty seconds of questioning myself and it was solved.
I took the gearbox apart out of fear derived from the internet. No need. (Although inspection is not a bad thing). No sharapnel, no rolled over edges, nothing interfering and making damage or undue friction. (I did that again after what I estimated to be an hour of actual running time, still the same). The worm DOES have really sharp edges, but in use, they don't scrape, plow, roll over, or otherwise interfere with the interaction of the gearset. They are sharp though... but there's a cast steel cover over them so you won't cut yourself..... No "upgrade" needed.
I studied the heck out of the belt that came with it, as allegedly that causes bad cuts. Can't prove it by me. It does drive the input to a worm gear set, so it's kinda isolated, and even if it was "lumpy" I'm not sure how you'd tell on a band saw.... No "upgrade" needed.
I set up a piece of stock (two and a half inch high carbon mystery steel. This crap is gnarly....) The blade kept falling off. Per the internet I scraped all the paint off of the drive wheel. Now it cut, but I was able to see the problem. The weld on the stock blade was not dead straight, so the blade immediately after the weld was angled down, and dug in, HARD. So bad blade. Fault number one. Dremel wheel sharpen about four teeth to a neutral rake, and finish the cut.
I checked for square, and found that the vise was out of square (I never set it, no fault), and the blade "wandered" about an eighth of an inch over that nasty piece of mystery metal. So I adjusted the guides. Over adjusted actually. It cut ever so slightly the other way. It's now about a sixteenth over a four inch part. I haven't chased it further because I don't care. But it's easily and infinitely adjustable, and the blades I have are made with more than enough set that it isn't going to be terribly tough to get a square cut out of them. They'll leave a good "window" of what's acceptable, so no micrometers will be required. My blades are the original which turns out to be "OK enough" after I found the problem and adjusted a few teeth to not dig in as the crooked weld passes the work, which is a bandaid... but it works. And the replacement I got preemptively before I solved that, a genuine Harbor Freight bi-metal blade. One's OK now, the other is pretty OK right out of the wrapper.
So.....
-30 seconds, literally two screws worth of aggravation during assembly.
-Blade and vise adjustments not perfect right out of the box.
-I'll throw in scraping the paint from the drive wheel. That wasn't needed, but if it won't wear off it might be good practice.
-The original blade was faulty, but usable (and even OK) with a little TLC.
Thats a saw in the three to four hundred dollar range, depending on your taxes and willingness to wait for a sale or cupon. What's the aggravation list on an industrial version in the 3 to 4 thousand range look like? I'd bet it's not any shorter. I'll bet it'll last a lot longer, hold up to commercial use, production work, be more forgiving of misuse, probably be much faster with more horsepower.... But I doubt the aggravation list on setup is any shorter.
I did do one "mod" to it. I put a Walmart dish pan on the shelf, hanging out on the cut side just a whisker. That was a nice addition, but there will be no week long build video series on my chip pan. On low speed, it nears 100 percent. On high speed, it's still pretty darned good, but not perfect. About the same as the multitude of "dust collection" that I've seen done on these. But I've discovered (since I learned to trust it...) that I can walk away. What's a faster cut gonna get me in that instance? It lives on low speed and I just don't care enough to ever change it. Even if I'm out of "work", I'll guarantee that unrelated to the bandsaw, there's a pile of junk "somewhere" that still needs picking up. Tools to put away, tools to take out for the next step, measurements to take.
I don't consider this a "mod" at all, but while I was setting up and adjusting it, during the cutting time I knocked out a crude but pretty OK "mini saw horse" out of 4/4 pine boards (3/4X5-1/2 actual) to hold up the "infeed" side of the material. Takes all the sport out of loading up really long material. I've got a piece of that about a foot long, I set that under the "drop" side. Takes the "clang" out of things when the offcut drops to the concrete.
It's ABSOLUTELY not industrial equipment, but it's one of the few items at Harbor Freight that I'll actually stand up for as being good for what it is. It's simple, so you "can" modify it quite a lot. It makes good videos. I just don't think there's any need. One really cool feature of the Harbor Freight type 4X6... Not exclusive to it, but not a guarantee on other models... If you close the vise, it's flat on top of the whole thing. In horizontal mode (if nobody's looking), you can sit on it motorcycle style, and it puts the platten (or the top of the guide if you're too lazy to use the platten) just about the right height and distance from you. If anybody accuses me of saying this, I'll deny it, but it's kind of a comfortable position for that type of work.
Relating this to the original post- I think that the portable saws with stands, and the fixed cutoff saws of the same design but not readily removeable, are in the same class of machine. Never meant to be industrial, all day, every day production machines. Probably gonna need dialing in when new. Probably gonna need a better blade than stock. But despite what you CAN do to them, I don't think there's much you NEED to do to them. They are very limited by their size (as is the 4X6), but if the work envelope fits your need.... And the space issue. That's real. If I had to choose between the two designs, and IF.... IF the two designs had the same capacity, I think I'd get more usefulness and general betterment of my life by being able to walk away from my saw than from the portability of a benchtop model. But that's my garage, the work I do, the work I enjoy, the frequency that I need or want to do other things with it.... Either would be an equally good or bad decision, it's just got to fit the work YOU do.
