Safety Speed Manufacturing

Inventing the vertical panel saw out of his suburban Minneapolis garage in 1958, Safety Speed founder, the late Gene Olson started writing our story in 1958. He owned a construction company in Minneapolis but had trouble keeping up with his carpenters due to having polio. He identified the need to efficiently and accurately cut large panels of wood easier than with his table saw. He put together a frame and attached a SKILSAW to make cuts and quickly realized that he had a million-dollar idea. He left the construction industry altogether and founded Safety Speed Cut Manufacturing, a name which stood until 2011 when it became Safety Speed Manufacturing to reflect that Safety Speed no longer was just about cutting.

Our reputation is in our name; we’ve produced the safest tools on the market, while providing saws with crosscut tolerances within 0.005” straight and square. We’ve lead American manufacturers in Vertical Panel Saws and Panel Routers since 1958 with over 70,000 machines sold worldwide.

We introduced a successful line of Wide Belt Sanders with 37 and 43 inch capacities in 2003. In 2008 we expanded yet again to meet the needs of our customers acquiring a proven line of Edgebanders featuring glue pot and hot air machines.

2013 was the debut of our Screw Pocket machines for the wood industry and the first introduction of our dust free, vertical substrate cutter product line for the sign making industry where we introduced two cutters. We expanded the dust free substrate cutter product line to include four Desktop Cutters in 2015. These additions, engineered with the customer in mind, provided innovative solutions to meet the industries ever-changing needs of both industries.

At Safety Speed our passion is building strong relationships by offering superior quality and value through manufacturing panel processing and fabricating equipment.