"Toy" Bandsaw

Its gonna have to be slowed way down to be usefull for metal cutting....if its anything like the typical small 2 or 3 wheel BS I have run across. Yes yu can get metal cuttingblades down as as small as 3/16" (smallest I have ever seen or had the need to use) Silver solder is very effective at producing a joint in putting bandsaw blades together....I doubt most any hoome builder or wood working store wold carry small metal cutting blades but most any industrial or welding supply shop / store that makes BS blades from coil stock would have them........The joint used is a scarf type joint.

REMEMBER: "This is worth repeating for benefit of al newbies! Jo Ann asked Dr. Solo to remind people that while she has retired from selling GF (and sold the business to Ken Fischer

Silver soldered is a scarf joint, time honored tradition to drive the apprentice further out of what little mine he has left. Welded joints can be stronger, if properly done, or weaker if not so good. You should be able to buy metal cutting blade stock in either 1/4" or

Greybeard.

Ha Ha. I had one. Ended up being "a tool I threw against the wall"

Is this the old Delta 3 wheeler? Blade size sounds about the same. Delta (called it an 18" due to the deeper throat) set those up so that there was a second belt supplied which fit over what was effectively the shaft of the lower wheel for driving. Basically it was like a double pulley but used a flat belt, Upi could use one belt to drive the normal pulley or a second to drive on an extended shaft surface. The intent was to slow things down enough to do *some* metal cutting also.

Koz

I had a German (Austrian?) three-wheeler in the small shop I set up in a hospital in the 80's. The saw had an "Emco" (not "Enco") label on it and might even have been build by them. I bought it when I bought my Emco-Meir V10-P (or 13-P, can't remember so well any more) with milling attachment. It had a welded rectangular tube frame, and I used it to surprisingly good advantage, mostly on aluminum. I now have an old Sears 3-wheeler that someone gave me that's a lot sturdier (cast iron frame), but really noisy. I use it for quick jobs, mostly in wood. I don't have a decent metal bandsaw. I usually use a sabre saw if I need to do a lot of cutting. Works pretty well, but can't handle much thickness.

-- Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)

First, to be clear, you have to decide what kind of metal you want to cut. Aluminum, copper, brass, the non ferrous metals, it will do, steel, I would not get my hopes up.

I had a version of this type of saw, probably the cheesiest cheapest version around, to be frank. Mine ran a largish O ring for a drive belt and was "torque limited" to say the least.

It was the cat's meow for cutting aluminum with a sharp 4 or 6 tpi blade moving as fast as it would run. Effortless cuts (not fast, though) through 1/2 inch plate, nice cuts on sheet stock down to .020 by placing the stock on a sacrificial layer of wood. For the larger stock, a sharp blade was a must have, with a very light touch on the feed to avoid bogging it down.

I doubt the bearings will handle the forces required to keep a cut going at the slow speeds required to cut steel with an appropriate blade. Not for any length of time, anyway.

Silver solder is excellent for joining blades and is a skill worth learning.

Cheers Trevor Jones

Aluminum sure, lightweight brass maybe, not steel thicker than about .090.

I made a speed reducer for a very old (vintage late '40s or early '50s) belt-drive Craftsman 3-wheeler using two stages of sprockets and chains. Noisy as hell, but it worked fine. But even that old Craftsman, with cast iron frame, just doesn't have the rigidity to withstand the forces used in cutting steel. It would throw blades as feed force deflected the frame enough to screw up the tracking.

You may not need a speed reducer for cutting aluminum.

Silverbrazing works fine for joining blade ends with a scarf joint. It's easy to make a simple jig to hold the blade for joining.

Thank you to all that replied, your comments are very helpful. Machine is direct drive from an induction motor, will try an electronic speed controller to see if it works first. Materials that would be cut are aluminum up to 1/4", brass to 3/16", steel to 1/16". Any suggestions on TPI for these metals? On scarf joints, what angle, 30 degrees (long scarf). Any suggestions on grinding blade to that angle? Ray, still in the sun, with ornamental cherry blossoms.

Ray: Single phase induction motors cannot be speed controlled very well and in any event you will not be able to reduce speed enough and still have power for steel. You are out of luck unless you want to make major mods to the drive system.

Jim

Ray Field wrote:

You will need 15:1 to 20:1 speed reduction to cut steel and brass without knocking the teeth off the blade. Not on with a motor control; you need belts or gears between the motor and the saw.

Aluminum can be cut at 3000 SFM, mild steel about 160 SFM although a really good blade can do 300 SFM in steel.

Dont forget "friction cutting"

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

It was. Mine has the same type of motor that the C5 milling machine (milling column for a Compact-5 on a separate (quite solid) X-Y base, and the same type that the manual Compact-5 lathe has. I've got the CNC version of the lathe, so I wind up with a DC PM motor instead.)

I've got one of them, too. I got it from eBay a couple of years ago, and it was not too well packed, so some of the plastic end plates were broken -- took a bit of work with some MEK to sort of glue them back together. I would love to find a source for replacement plastic end caps for the channels, though it does still work well.

Anyway -- it had provisions for three speeds. The first two were fast speeds, with small pulleys on the hub of the third wheel. The third speed was a pulley groove cut around the bottom wheel, just beside the fan blade -- big diameter to very small motor pulley diameter. A bit fast for steel, but nice for most other common metals. The high speed works well for aluminum.

For cutting round or square stock to length, I have one of the ubiquitous 4x6" "$200.00 bandsaws", which now sell for about $160.00. :-)

The combination of the two covers most of my needs.

Enjoy, DoN.

Unless it is a three-phase motor, it won't. VFDs do a nice job of controlling the speed of three-phase motors. Other induction motors (single-phase) really don't work with the variable frequency, and most inexpensive speed controllers are for universal (AC/DC) motors, not induction motors.

Even with a VFD on a three-phase motor, you won't have the needed torque at very slow speeds -- and the motor may well burn up, unless you supply an alternate fan to keep cooling air circulating through the motor.

Based on thickness -- you should have at least two (ideally

I'm not sure, as I have a blade welder. Hopefully, others will answer this part.

Good Luck, DoN.