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Cutting steel with a bandsaw

G

GirlScout1

NAXJA Forum User
Location
WA
I have been looking at picking up a bandsaw to cut steel with. Aside from getting one that is made to cut heavy duty steel does anyone have any recommendations? I was thinking of just getting a good one from Home Depot that is variable speed. Has one one used one?
 
We use a Milwaukee portable bandsaw at work for cutting both aluminum & steel. Works great. A stand up model would be better for getting a straight cut, or if you wanted to use a jig.
 
itll work, its slow, and not very accurate, you can set up small jigs and such to help you out, depending on what your cutting (tubing or plate) you mite be better off w/ a chop saw and an angle grinder
 
oh yeah, it can definatly be done, and having a ban saw is nice, because you can cut steel, aluminum, ti, any "regular" metal basically, plastic, wood, pretty much anything you want, which you cant do w/ a chop saw w/o different wheels and blades
 
search for "Horizontal Bandsaw" on google...

that is the trick metal cutting bandsaw...
 
XJ_ranger said:
search for "Horizontal Bandsaw" on google...

that is the trick metal cutting bandsaw...
Click to expand...
yeah i have looked at them but i was really thinking of getting just a regular table band saw since I could use it for other wood working jobs too.
 
Here is what I use to cut all of my steel at my house as space is at a premium and I don't want to invest in a house while I am stationed away from home:



It cuts very straight and clean and as long as you can measure and draw a straight line you can do a lot of stuff with it.

Sorry extremley large pic but the pic is of a skillsaw with an abrasive blade used as sort of a poormans chopsaw
 
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a good bandsaw has it's advantages over a chop saw. it is much more accurate with a good operator, and doesn't heat up and distort the metal like a chop saw will. they're also quicker than "laying it on" :D the bench grinder for shaping smaller stuff. if you need to rip thru some oak quickly, most metal blades will do the job, but if you don't want burn marks you're gonna need a saw designed to cut both metal and wood, and the proper blades.
 
A portable band saw is a great, fast, and low cost way to fit (fishmouth) tubes for welding.
Both Milwaukee and Porter are good machines around the same price at Home Depot.
 
A bandsaw for cutting steel runs a lot slower than a bandsaw for cutting wood. So, you can't get just any old variable speed bandsaw. There are variable speed bandsaws out there that are made for different hardnesses of wood and the slowest speed is still too fast for cutting steel. You have to be sure that the lowest speed is slow enough for cutting steel.
 
surely somebody makes one designed to do both... i mean, i know that they run at different speeds, but i would think that somewhere out there is a 2 speed portable-?
 
xuv-this said:
surely somebody makes one designed to do both...
Click to expand...
Sure, they're out there. Plenty of them. I'm just saying that you need to be sure you get one that will run slow enough for steel. They're not hard to find, but you can't just assume that EVERY variable speed bandsaw will work with steel.
 
For a metal cutting band saw you want something that goes really slow, in the 200 FPM or less range. Somewhere between 80 and 100 FPM does well. Most woodworking band saws are in the 800-1200 FPM range and even the variable speed ones don’t usually go that slow. I have cut sheet metal (1/8” & ¼”) with a skill saw before. It is fine if you just need to make a couple of quick cuts or occasionally rip a sheet into more usable sizes. Just make sure you feed the saw nice and slow, don’t try to push it through. I burned up two skill saws cutting sheets, but I tend to be hard on tools. They make skill saws specifically for metal cutting, but I’m too cheap to buy one.
 
Ive got one of the harbor freight specials thats probably 10-15 years old...still chuggin along just fine and will cut anything i could ever ask of it. I despise chop saws after using them...they can distort the metal due to heat leaving a less than straight cut, you cant really touch anything you cut for several minutes as its smoking hot, leaves alot of sharp edges, blows crap all over your garage and their noisey. The band saw is slower, but generally leaves a cleaner cut with little to no sharp edges and IMO, is more accurate.
 
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