Saw option for cutting metal

anyone have any experience with this saw or similar in cutting up largeish billets, say inch thick by two inches wide or similar? Wondering of the utility of cutting and restacking pattern weld billets.
 
Stacy: I have used one 12" carbide blade saw to cut steel. Quite frankly it did not go well, the blade cut less than a standard abrasive blade. If you fed it too quickly it would chip the teeth also. I use carbide for aluminum, but have stayed with abrasive or band saw for steel.
Your mileage may vary.
 
Don Hanson III said:
I've been thinking about one of these for years, just never pulled the trigger.
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As i understand it its very good for cutting clean, square annealed steel. if you are prepping steel for a billet, its great.

But it is not very good for cutting up an already welded billet which may not be annealed, its not fully uniform shape could twist and bind the blade, and the scale can damage teeth.
 
i know a few ears ago i was looking at one of these for cutting aluminum 7075 bar into blocks for the mill. wonder how long the blades last in say 4" 52100 round stock?
 
Well it gets points in my book for being named after a Roman emperor...

Is this considered a cold saw? I see them come up used but they are much larger than this one and usually have a large handle coming off the top of the saw for leverage. So I'm wondering how useful this would actually be. I also noticed the video says it cuts mild, angle, aluminum and stainless. I'd guess that if it could cut carbon they would just say "cuts any metal".

What's the main reason to use this or a cold saw, if this isn't one, over an abrasive saw? Heat? I think Salem bought a big cold saw not too long ago, maybe last year? Just curious why I would want one over an abrasive saw.

-Clint
 
I worked in a fab shop that ran one all day a lot of days... we made tens of thousands of cuts in a month perhaps. For cutting mild steel square tube etc, they are great- horribly loud and spit blue hot chips all over, but really nice cut and fast, until the blade begins to wear significantly. Blades can last a good while, although they are expensive to replace. The one we used was an Evolution 14" model. It was faster than the cold saw or a bandsaw, more like a chopsaw in speed but a cleaner cut.
However it was not great for cutting anything but mild steel, as far as hardness. You could cut things like bed frame steel which is harder than mild, but it would smoke the blade faster for sure and smoking $100 blades early sucks. We had an abrasive chopsaw down the line that was used for anything harder than mild. Also it was not great for cutting solids. Probably up to 1.5" in a pinch was reasonable, in mild steel... but 4" 52100 rounds, even annealed? No way. You need a big abrasive chopsaw for that. Or a horizontal bandsaw. Much like a chopsaw, once the surface area being cut gets too big for the blade or motor power, it begins to rub rather than cut, and the results are not pretty.
You'd need to fully anneal billets, keep them smaller in size, and grind the scale off if you were using these for pattern welding work.
 
I had a very nice (not a huge automatic, but a medium sized, industrial quality, manual) cold saw for a while, hoped to use it for cutting tiles for flopped billets, and other billet work. I found it to be a less than ideal solution, and sold it.

The biggest issue is kerf. Secondly, even with carbide blades, they don't handle non-annealed billets well even from 10xx/15n20 (I cut through these constantly and forever with the premium bi-metal blades on my large horizontal, from sawblade.com also), and seem to be magic at work hardening stuff that normally doesn't.


I *HATE* abrasive saws, so I've tried every option I'm aware of. The tricky thing with even a large horizontal band saw is that, unless it's really tight, and with large 1" or taller blades, any amount of "out of square" cut on a tile for a flop, introduces alignment issues (I'm a stickler for layer alignment), so I'm always looking for a more foolproof option, but when you factor in the kerf, it's actually worse than a slightly out of square tile for layer alignment.

I tried a bunch of super expensive blades, nothing worked out. Fortunately, I got the saw on a great deal, and made a bunch of money to cover my time, selling to a small fab shop that wanted it for what it's perfect for: structural tubing and bundles of small rounds.


Unfortunately for stainless damascus, I've conceded the fact that abrasive saws are a way of life, unless I want to anneal for each restack. At least I can keep it outside, which sucks for noise and the incoming weather... =\
 
Just wanted to add, that mine was a real cold-saw, with sub 100 rpm, and flood coolant for the blade. I can't remember off the top of my head which model, but it was a domestically produced premium quality machine, with a big long handle you could get a lot of ass into, and a large plate base.

Maybe these type of blades on this saw above are better, they look more like the carbide chop saw blades for wood cutting mitre saws, and I've heard of people having decent luck with these, but mostly for mild tubing.



On the other hand; the M71 high production blades from sawblade.com will cut through non-annealed billets like a hot knife through butter, at higher feeds and speed than I'm comfortable cutting at typically. I usually fuck them up doing something stupid, and have never worn one out on damascus. Cutting composites on the other hand, which are abrasive is a different story, and I've destroyed a bunch of them cutting vintage rag micarta, pure nickel (ITS HELL), or spring tempered 15n20 that was supposed to be annealed and wasn't.

I recently however got one of their "Triple Chip Carbide" tooth blades, and I have to say, it's insane. It destroys pure nickel or spring tempered 15n20. Haven't tried it on composites yet, which is what I got it for, but I will soon. Either way it's saved me hours of waiting for my saw to slow poke through pure nickel plate, which I usually have to weight the saw head down, even with the head weight set to max and hydraulic down feed.

I've been cutting a lot of 1/8" nickel 200 plate lately for one of my main customers that uses damascus for non-knife stuff.


To give you a point of reference also, this is not a small saw. It's a Startrite H250A, that uses 1" x 0.035" x 10'6" blades. Not huge, but it's a real saw, with controlled and fully variable hydraulic up and down feed. Weighs maybe 1300-1500lbs, listed capacity is I think 8x10" square, but I've cut 12x12 with it on numerous occasions, with modified vise jaws.
 
Good info. That's what I love about shop talk. I may get one to augment my abrasive chop saw.
 
We bought an Evolution saw several years ago. It works good for some steel and poorly for others. One 36" cut in annealed .063" 410 stainless removed all the teeth from the blade.

Chuck
 
IMO, unless you are doing a lot of fabrications in aluminium or mild steel, it really isn't a step up. That said... I'm sure the air is much cleaner. Abrasive disk dust is the worst.
 
A low RPM hydraulic feed cold saw like Javand describes is best for the large solids, but even then only if you need the cuts to be more square and precise than an industrial bandsaw would provide, as it's going to be faster. For example, at Leeson, we had 2 running continuously cutting shaft material as the first step in the process. Saw operators would cut the shaft blanks, dump them into a centerless grinder and grind the OD where the stator would be heat shrunk on, and then send them to the center drill. Most of these shafts were never faced in the lathes, because the cold saw finish was sufficient and it cut very square compared to a bandsaw.

That's really the only place I've seen saws like that in use, where large diameter solids needed to be cut to a level of precision that would eliminate operations downstream. Because they're slow.
 
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