Turn your cheapo bandsaw into a Ti/Steel/Alu eating monster

spaceman_spiff

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A bandsaw may be a simple tool, but it can become a major source of annoyance and bottleneck in your work and your enjoyment of your hobby if its taking forever to cut through thick stock.

You may have read that using a bimetal, low tooth per inch blade helps. But unless you've tried it, I bet you don't know just how INSANE the difference is. Yes INSANE.

I got my 8 year old Horrible Freight horizontal vertical bandsaw (yes the famous one everyone has), and first thing I did after tuning it up was try to cut through a block of 6061 using the typical 14 tpi carbon steel blade on it.

It could not have been more disappointing. After 5 minutes it had barely gone through 1/2" of a 3" thick block of 6061.

Purely by chance, I happened to have a 14 foot, brand new, 5 tpi, bimetal bandsaw blade that was 1/2" wide and 0.025" thick. I decided to see if somehow it would improve things so I cut it up and TIG welded it together to make a blade that would fit the little HF saw.

Then I tried the cut again.

UM. In 5 minutes it had cut through the ENTIRE 3" x 4" 6061-T6 block!!!

That right there turned the saw from a nearly useless tool into something much better than I expected.

I then tried 1018 steel and it was the same deal. I used the fastest speed on the pulleys. It cut through it like nothing, not much slower than the aluminum.

Just for a lark, I then tried cutting through a 1.5" thick by 5" wide 6al4V titanium block I had. And yes, still at the full speed pulley settings.

It cut through it in about 15 minutes!!

The chip clearance and cutting style with this blade is AMAZING. I've used the same blade for about 8 months and cut dozens of huge blocks of aluminum. Its worth EVERY penny and I would never buy another carbon steel blade. And all those dozens of huge aluminum chunks I've cut during the 8 months was done after my tests on the titanium and steel, BTW.

In the picture is what I believe was the tag that went on the blade.

There is a blade on ebay that I have in my "watch list" for when I need to get a replacement blade. I would hope it has the same performance, its bi metal, the right length for this saw, and about the same TPI. First to try it and report gets a high five!! Here it is: http://www.ebay.com/itm/370800913134?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

It should be noted that the high tooth count carbon steel blades still have uses..for instance cutting thin wall tubing where a low tooth count blade would catch and pull the tube.


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Looks like it will cut real nasty material quick and easy too. That low of a tooth count is gonna preclude just about all thin walled tubing because it will probably catch a tooth and start peeling them off or flatten your tooth set and make it do angles and get all hung up.. Hope not because that looks like such a great idea and I would be willing to give it a try if I can find the material to cut down to length and weld with my tig too. Keep us posted on how long that blade lasts too please.

Bob
 
Jeez, that looks like a wood blade. I would never have even tried it on that saw to cut steel, but aluminum is OK. I'm usually not in any hurry when I'm cutting on mine so I run it real slow to ensure that I get a good, straight cut and minimize mill time.
 
Jeez, that looks like a wood blade. I would never have even tried it on that saw to cut steel, but aluminum is OK. I'm usually not in any hurry when I'm cutting on mine so I run it real slow to ensure that I get a good, straight cut and minimize mill time.

Cutting fast actually doesn't make the little HF bandsaw cut crooked. With only a little adjustment I get 0.030" taper from top to bottom of a 3" thick piece, thats what those 1/8" sticks of aluminum under the blade guide mounts are. I could probably tune that out to even less of a taper by putting in set screws instead of the spacers and adjusting it to perfection, but 30 thou is fine since everything gets dropped in the mill. And FWIW that taper is there even when I switch blades to a high TPI carbon steel blade and cut very slowly..its just part of this bandsaws little quirks.
 
Looks like it will cut real nasty material quick and easy too. That low of a tooth count is gonna preclude just about all thin walled tubing because it will probably catch a tooth and start peeling them off or flatten your tooth set and make it do angles and get all hung up.. Hope not because that looks like such a great idea and I would be willing to give it a try if I can find the material to cut down to length and weld with my tig too. Keep us posted on how long that blade lasts too please.

Bob

I actually have to cut 1/16" wall 6061 tubing frequently, and I switch out the blade for the 14tpi carbon steel blade, like I mentioned and actually even that blade grabs a bit. I think more like 18 or 20tpi would be called for in that case. But this aggressive bade seems to cut 1/8th inch wall okay.
 
I have the HF bandsaw and though I work while it is cutting, it takes about 10 minutes to cut through the 2 1/2" 6061 T6 I use. I need 3/4" thick billets to work with and I use a lot of them so the time is still a bother. I've tried lots of blades and WiSHED I could find one with fewer TPI than 12. I ordered the one you pointed to on eBay. At $22 and $12 shipping that is stupid-expensive but I have to know. (And I don't have a tig welder.) The site said "Economy Shipping from outside US
Est. delivery between Wed. Nov. 19 - Mon. Dec. 1" - so it could be crap. Who knows. I will try to remember to post the results here!

THANK YOU for the info.

/Greg
http://www.blowsmeaway.com
 
36 bucks for a good blade aint to bad. Long as it's good. You need to keep 2+ teeth in the work. So thinner the wall higher the tpi. Can you cut on less teeth? Sure, but your on borrowed time in regards to ruining the blade, stock, both.
 
I actually order my blades from Amazon. For my 4x6 bandsaw. In fact the blades are Starrett bi metal. Personally I have had good results cutting steel,stainless, brass, and aluminum. With these blades, in fact they are less expensive than the Lennox bi metal blades and perform as well for me. I use the 14 to 16 per inch tooth count blades to cut everything in my home shop.
 
Sawlog - that's what I've been doing too. And it works fine. Just SLOW! I just heard from the eBay seller - the blade mentioned above is coming from Canada. That makes me feel better......
 
In all fairness you went from a cheap china worthless blade to a quality Starrett blade.

It's not all in the TPI of the blade, it's the quality.
 
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