Bandsaw Question

Aluminum will work OK but a bit slower would be better. Wear goggles, lots of HOT flying particles. No steel or brass.
Snag wrote:

With a good blade, it should do aluminium OK, but slowly if the motor is small. Steel is totally out of the question at that speed.
What's the size, make and model, and the motor power?
Joe Gwinn

I was kinda expecting the responses I got . Too fast and too weak . It's a Delta 28-160 10" and the motor tag sez it's 1/5 hp . Looks like this one will be reserved for plastics and wood . I got it for like 5 bucks from a kid who worked at a cabinet shop with me . Spent 12 bucks for tires , and a decent blade should run around 10 or 12 , so I'm not too deep into it . Not that I want to do woodwork at home after a full day of it ... Metalworking relaxes me , unlike my friend Bill the machinist . He does woodworking for fun .

I use a small Delta every day to cut brass, german silver and steel. It ran too fast when I started this job, I thought. What I did was slow it down. I took a piece of al. I bored a hole . Next I made a shaft with a step pulley on it and pressed the shaft into the bored hole. At the other end of the al I put another bored hole with an old bearing in it with another shaft. I milled a flat on the end sticking out and drilled a couple of holes at this end and mounted to the frame of machine. got a coupple belts and I had slowed down the thing by about 50%. This was just a guess as to the right speed by me but the amount of blades the company used on this machine went down from about $1000/yr to 200/yr. The cost was two v belts, old bearing, two bolts and some al that was laying around. When were doing steel and I don't do much on this i,m only cutting .060 thick at the max. I was planning on doing something similar with two of my step pulley al. pieces to slow down another bandsaw for doing greater dia steel but never hae time but its the same principle

Did you miss the part where I said the drive wheel is on the motor shaft ?

For a motor that small an electronic variable speed control might not be too expensive.
Snag wrote:

The cost reduction sounds good. What size & make & model blades are you using?
Hul
Dr. Butter wrote: