Slitting Saw Woes

Jim, thanks for that video. It was very interesting.

I noticed he used the slitting saw again around 16 minutes and his arbor had a substantial wobble. I'm surprised he didn't have any problems with it. Maybe because it was cutting aluminum. The arbor I used definitely ran truer than that one. I also noted he did not use flood coolant / lube. Much less mess that way and it obviously worked, even in the drill rod.
 
Didn't notice the wobble in the aluminium but maybe that was his way to gain clearance. Someone asked in the comments about running the arbor in a drill chuck that might have been of which they speak. The drill rod cut was closer to what your doing but I would use more coolant then he did.

Jim
 
HBilly1022 said:
Jim, thanks for that video. It was very interesting.

I noticed he used the slitting saw again around 16 minutes and his arbor had a substantial wobble. I'm surprised he didn't have any problems with it. Maybe because it was cutting aluminum. The arbor I used definitely ran truer than that one. I also noted he did not use flood coolant / lube. Much less mess that way and it obviously worked, even in the drill rod.
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Some radial run-out is not a problem, you can hear it as he takes his cuts. It does look like some axial run-out also but his cuts are so shallow I don't think it's a problem. I'm no authority but it's what I've learned to be true.
 
I don't pretend to be an expert with slitting saws, but I have used them alot. No matter if it was a 10 dollar Chinese blade or a $70 USA blade they all have runout due to the arbor. I use to fret about it, but I figure its like a a flycutter, you hit and cut and then nothing, repeat, rinse and start over do it some more. I have dialed in arbors, found them to be true put on a name brand USA blade and same deal. As others have said, a half decent blade, reasonable speed and feed that is enough to feel some resistance when hand feeding gives me best results. I use Mist coolant, either fogless or siphon style, they both get the job done. The air in the mist helps clear the chip while the fluid in the mist cools. Flood coolant would be grand but I don't use it on any of machines even though they are ( were) set up for it. The advantage of hand feeding is if things go south, you can pull back instantly and save most of blade teeth, if you are under powerfeed and the wheels come off, usually the blade is toast, if you only loose one or two teeth hand feeding you can still have a usable tool. Usually the problems have been hitting a hard spot in cast iron. My one very spendy USA slitting blade has 3 teeth in a row stripped, it still works fine.
 
Doubleeboy said:
(Snip)My one very spendy USA slitting blade has 3 teeth in a row stripped, it still works fine.
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I saw Abom79 do that in a video and thought "NO!!!", but it worked out just fine. After that I pulled a nice 5" stagger tooth slitting saw missing three teeth out of my scrap tool steel and put it in with the good saws. Haven't tried it yet, but not afraid to now...
 
Well if you guys can use blades with missing teeth I am going to give my blade another try. Its the only one I have so if I can't get it to work I will need to get another one or figure out another way to get this done. I've got one more collet to make then I will need to split all 4 collets. Going to use the info provided here and see if I can get my current blade to cut. I felt it again and notice the sides of the teeth feel sharp except for the very outer perimeter, where they are shiny (dull). The outside edges (on the periphery) feel dull and they felt the same before I used it the first time.

brino said:
I have used one of the Lee Valley slitting saws lately for steel and had great results.
It's item "N" on this page:
http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=50249&cat=1,330,50260

I used a different arbor though.

-brino
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Thanks Brino. I didn't know Lee Valley sold metal working stuff. Good to know.
 
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One more thing I did NOT see mentioned above......

It sounds obvious, but with the teeth on these cutters being so small (....and my aging eyes!) it is real easy to get the blade installed upside-down on the arbor. In fact, the last time I used it I was about to turn on the mill and stopped to double-check. Yep I had the slitting saw on wrong and it would have run the back of the teeth into the work piece. Just barely caught that one before ruining the blade.

-brino
 
brino said:
One more thing I did NOT see mentioned above......

It sounds obvious, but with the teeth on these cutters being so small (....and my aging eyes!) it is real easy to get the blade installed upside-down on the arbor. In fact, the last time I used it I was about to turn on the mill and stopped to double-check. Yep I had the slitting saw on wrong and it would have run the back of the teeth into the work piece. Just barely caught that one before ruining the blade.

-brino
Click to expand...

Excellent point but in this case it was installed in the correct orientation. It helps to point out the obvious questions though because there are a lot of times it is one of those obvious things at play. Like your post about the guy whose PM1236 wouldn't start. I'm embarrassed to say I did the same thing last week but I didn't have the excuse of not having used the machine for a while. Just one of those brain farts that I get sometimes. I'm blaming it on old age.
 
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