Upscale wrote:
Assuming you have to rip an 8' piece of plywood. How easy/fast can
you
remove/move out of the way the sliding portion of the sliding table
to
permit such a cut? Do you find it's sometimes a pain to have to walk
around
the sliding table to grab what's been pushed through to an outfeed
table.

I've also got an Excalibur sliding table (the 40 model) on a Unisaw.

The sliding table fence has two lock levers that when loosened let you
slide it left to right. In a few seconds you can loosen it and slide
it to the left and get 14" rip capacity to the left of the blade
without taking it off the sliding table. As Ed said, taking the fence
off completely doesn't take much longer.

It does take a couple of extra steps to get around, but until you
mentioned it, I really hadn't noticed. I find the convenience and
accuracy far offsets the extra steps. It really shines cutting panels.
I don't have a RAS or SCMS, so I also use this for cutting to length.
The scale for the flip stop is a pain to calibrate, but once you do (or
often I use the saw's rip fence with a stop block to set cut off
lengths), you get really easy, repeatable length cuts.

That said, like everything there are tradeoffs. It can't compete with
a dedicated panel saw or one of those nice European sliding saws. OTOH,
for smaller work a sled is a much more economical option. For what I
do I wouldn't give up this saw/sliding table combination.

Tim