Anything welding

A little project I was working on during my off hitch.




Turning a bit of steel tube into a stand for the tube bender







I ended up putting a Lenox 52 tooth carbide steel cutting blade on my grandfathers old 10" Delta Miter saw, $70 was a lot cheaper than buying a new evolution cold cut saw at the moment.

I was pretty impressed by the cuts it made...




This was the test cut I did when I first installed the blade, now the guys who have been using cold saws are going to be, yep now you see why we like them better..



Even on the 2"x3" tube it still cut better than my old abrasive chop saw.

 

How loud was the saw cutting the tube?

 

Did you need to lubricate the blade while you were cutting?

 

It was far quieter than I expected.. I would say a bit less than my old abrasive cutoff saw. and alot more quiet when compared the wheel of death in an angle grinder

 

no.. not on steel

on aluminum Lenox recommends a bit of paste wax to help keep the aluminum from gumming up the blade.

 

I did a test cut on some angle, and measured the saw running free at 85db cutting through the steel at average of 95db with peak of 97db. this was using an app on the phone since I could not find my real Decibel meter. for measuring the phone was place at roughly ear level from the saw.

 

Interesting. I bought a diablo metal cutting blade for my circular saw to cut 3/16" steel and got 6 inches out of it before it went dull, so I figured I must have screwed up by somehow not lubricating it. Sounds like I need to try the Lenox blade you bought.

 

My understanding is that the metal blades prefer a slower speed which is why they recommend not using metal blades on wood cutting saws. Same with drill bits. The rapid dulling of the blade could’ve been due to excessive speed/heat. Still, a different brand of blade would tell you if that’s the case.

 

Nothing crazy but welded up some blocks today.

 

Yup. Though drill bits are more due to the tip geometry.

Diablo are good blades. I'm generally one for lubrication.

One thing on these is heat, cutting a tube vs a sheat tends to be tougher in blades.

 

Spent a little time tonight working on the Trekker engine cage

 

Is that a joint you can buy or did you make it? Either way, cool.

 

I was going to ask if those joints were worth a damn but that answers that.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/263833086915

 

I've got the diablo blade myself installed on an Evo Rage 3 compound miter saw. It was on sale at Canadian Tire, already came with a "hybrid blade" that could cut steel, and was able to slide back and forth as well ( don't know the official name for that )

it made a few cuts in steel really well, I took my time, let the blade do the work, but eventually ruined the blade by not clamping my work. so I stepped up and bought a generic blade for $50 cdn peso's and proceeded to do it all over again ( not clamp my work ) from what I can tell, these blades do NOT like any sort of side to side movement when cutting, the teeth just break right off.

onto blade #3, the diablo, Noticably better cuts, I clamped my work, and I think it lasted a decent amount of time but she was pricy, $79 CAD. this time that aluminum fence broke right half in two!. I fixed that by putting down some 1/4" angle iron as my fence. new blade and new fence lasted a decent amount of time until my friend cut some stuff ( did not clamp his work ) and it slipped and wrecked the blade. Blade #4 lasted a good amount cutting 2" square 1/8" wall tubing, 1.75 DOM .120 wall and some plate ( sliders ) but recently that blade started throwing more sparks then chips, so now i'm waiting for blade #5 to arrive.

make sure you clamp your work! with this next blade, I think I'm going to try and keep track of the amount of cuts I get from it to see if i'm actually getting good value out of this.

in case anyone is wondering, the Evo Rage 3 blade speed is 2,500RPM ( VS my cheap-o miter saw rated at 5,500 RPM )


I'm not saying what I did / done is the way to go, just sharing my experience.

 

out of my own curiosity, I checked the spec on the Evo 3 chop saw ( the one dedicated to cutting metal ) its blade speed is 1,450 RPM and those diablo blades I run say a max rpm of 3000, so I "should" be good running them in my current setup.

**edit**
if I had to do it over again, I would go with the Evo 3 metal saw. I was intrigued by the possibility of getting rid of my "wood only" chop saw with this magical combo, but as you can tell from my stories above, its not suited for an actual metal fab shop. I think it would do really well in a construction environment where you need to cut the occasional piece of metal

 

Great discussion, thanks guys.

I'd been looking at the Evo but ended up buying this fella on Black Friday since NorthernTool had it on sale and was offering $50 e-gift card with a $250 purchase and I had another ~$60 worth of planned purchases. Having a NT store three miles away is a mixed blessing.

Hoping to give it a try this weekend.

https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200660083_200660083

 

Santa has given me the green light to look around for a plasma cutter for Christmas in the $500 range, so wondering what recommendations you all have for new machines in that price range.

I also looked on FB Marketplace just to see what comes up and came across a Longevity Forcecut 62i for $650. Anyone familiar with Longevity and how good a machine it is? Seems like it's a pretty nice one, definitely more than I need but it's at a good price (they go for $1200 brand new). The seller said he just used it twice to cut an RV frame.
https://www.longevity-inc.com/forcecut-62i

 

I have an Everlast SuperCut that was sub $700 I think. It’s only been used a couple times but it works well. I know that @EatSleepTacos has a Vulcan(?) cutter and he’s made good cuts with his, I think that’s around $700 as well.

 

I have the titanium HF one but it's $900. When I bought it I got lucky and used a coupon and that put it down to $750 but there's currently no valid coupons, just checked. I like the cutter. I just wish it had a proper drag tip instead of the little stand off that comes with it. That's my only complaint with it.

 

I've got the Amazon CUT50 cheapo.
it cuts 3/16 pretty well IMO. Its a drag start. I've had it about a year. I've used it less then 10 times in the past year, so take my statements with a grain of salt.
My Biggest Gripe is the very short ground clamp cable, and equally short power cable.