Slicing Stainless Rod

On 8/19/2019 4:16 PM, Bob La Londe wrote:> Periodically I make a part that requires sections of 1.5inch stainless > rod. They need to be consistently sized and the cut needs to decently > perpendicular. It doesn't need to be aerospace accurate, but they need > to look good. In the past I have sliced them with a parting blade on > the lathe, and knocked the burr off the edges with a file while it > parting. Its not great, and I still need to lightly face the parts. I > probably just need to try it and see, but I was wondering if it might be > faster to just section them to rough length on the horizontal bandsaw, > and then face them to length. I guess I should go look up some SFM > numbers to see how fast I can saw cut 304.

I was also thinking if I make a spider I can lock the carriage and face the to length in batches.

I had to clean up the machining on my 4x6 before I could set the fence square to about 0.01" per inch or better with a try square. In the vertical direction the legs need to be shimmed to straighten the table so the blade descends square . Outdoors I move it around to find a sweet spot on the pavement.

On a good day facing off ~0.005" cleans up the end of 2" saw cutoffs.

I'm listening to the Rumours: Fleetwood Mac program on PBS which is a tribute band, not the documentary of making that painful album. This band is very good and the singer imitates Stevie Nicks' voice almost perfectly.

I make various parts with tube or solid bar up to about 12mm so a bit smaller than what you're doing. I use a slitting saw mounted on an arbor held in my lathe spindle and a fixture to hold the material mounted in the lathe tool post. Once set-up I can accurately turn out parts to close length tolerances and square. Sometimes I run coolant sometimes I just apply it manually. Cutting is almost always done with the power feed and I usually do 100+ items at a time.

Sounds interesting. Material, speed, feed, tool life?

The largest number I produce probably numbers around 2000 - 2500 to date of a small spacer made from 316 seamless 6mm OD tubing 1mm wall, cutting speed as recommended for the material and HSS the lathe set for that speed or the next lower, feed is what I'm happy with. For that job I normally use a fine tooth slitting saw so have plenty of teeth to work with and haven't retired a saw yet due to wear just occasionally I don't tighten the tube clamp enough and the tube spins which damages the saw, I must have cut a 1000 on one saw as I normally do them in batches of

250. I have plenty of saws as when a local engineering work was demolished some years ago a mate who knew the demolition contractor put in a bid for me and got me what is likely to be a lifetimes supply of slitting saws, side and face cutter and slab mills. The company did a lot of fine work so the slitting saws vary in size from about 2" up to 6", the ones I use for the job mentioned before are IIRC 2.5" x 1/32" with fine teeth.