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Carbide tipped bandsaw blades
May 14, 2010
3:51 am
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JNewman
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Anyone use them? I have been cutting a lot of as forged/normalized 4140/4340. It is sometimes hard on blades, I am currently using MK Morse M42 bimetal blades paying about $50ea the carbide are around $200 but if hitting a slightly hard spot doesn't kill one side of the blade it could end up cheaper. But if they are really fussy and easily damaged or need a higher speed (saw is max 260sfm) it's probably not worth it.

May 14, 2010
5:13 am
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Grant
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Hey John! I'm pretty much in the same boat, thought about them a lot, never tried one. Then again I had employees who weren't as careful as they might be if they were paying for them. That being said, I used to sharpen lots of big demolition bits by sawing a new point or chisel on them. I got really good life out of M42 blades running about 100 SFP.

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot,
but then there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence,
transform a yellow spot into the sun.” ~ Pablo Picasso ~

May 15, 2010
7:45 pm
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JNewman
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Well if I try one I will let you know. The blade that is on the saw right now that I thought was toast because it was sawing WAY out of square on some pipe, just cut 100 pcs. of 2" x5/8" flat bar and the cuts were square. I had them on edge because I was cutting 6 at a time. So the blades are lasting longer than I thought. The blade is way too coarse for the pipe (4 6 vari) I had the feed set really slow but I wonder if the coarsness of the blade was why it was cutting crooked.

Was that 100 sfp just for hard material or did you run it that slow for everything?

May 15, 2010
8:39 pm
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Grant
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I run about 150 on annealed alloy steel and 300 on mild. In fact, I was going through too many blades once on mild by going too slow. Things improved a lot when I kicked it up to 300. Higher speeds tend to cut straighter too.

I was having trouble with blades cutting crooked after a short time and recently found my idler wheel slide was so packed with rusty chips and gunk that it was preventing the blade from pulling up tight. Man! What a difference! Sure glad I had saved all those blades, they work great again. Need good guides and good tension.

I once had a guy cutting 3" diameter copper-nickel slugs for me. Nasty, gummy crap, it was, likes to take out teeth. Hard to find the right speed/feed. Well, he was cutting late one night and wiped out his last bi-metal blade. Ha had some el-cheapo carbon steel blades and figured he'd get a few more parts by using one. He cut parts all night! Now he won't use anything else for Cu-Ni!

My 30+ year old 18 X 18 automatic saw:

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“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot,
but then there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence,
transform a yellow spot into the sun.” ~ Pablo Picasso ~

May 15, 2010
9:35 pm
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Gene C
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1/2" pure copper rod was cut into 1 1/4" lengths for forging key fob medallions, if a blade was dull it was a bear sometimes, binding up. Found that by using one blade reserved for copper only, it solved a lot of problems.

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