Patent ID: 7614330

Claim:
A power table saw of the type which has a generally rectangular table with front and rear end portions, a motor operatively coupled to drive a rotary cutting blade extending upwardly through a top of the table, said table saw comprising: an elongated fence having front and rear end portions, and being configured to be laterally movable along the width of the table and be secured to the front and rear end portions of the table; front and rear releasable locking mechanisms operatively associated with said front and rear end portions of said fence for locking each end portion to the end portions of the table; at least one positional sensor having an optical reflective reader provided with each of said front and rear end portions of said fence for determining the lateral position of each end portion of said fence along the width of the table; and at least one display screen for digitally displaying relative positions of each of said front and rear end portions to thereby display the distance of each end of the fence relative to a reference position and to indicate parallelism of said fence relative to the plane of the cutting blade when the difference between the two distances is zero.