Archive:Equipment/VerticalBandsaw

About

There is now a vertical bandsaw in the space.

This machine is dangerous .. even more dangerous than the other machines. And they're not pussycats - they can all kill you, some more quickly than others. This particular one likes to cut bits off you in a blink, then leave you to bleed to death but if sufficiently abused it can come up with more creative methods.

Status

The blade snapped. I've emailed Artag about it. AJP 27.3.11

I have a couple of spare wood-cutting blades available, but it might be better to stick to metal-cutting blades as fitted previously. If you use the saw, please let me know what for so we can choose something suitable. Artag, 27.3.11

How to use

tl;dr summary:

• It's intended for light duty work - cutting PCBs, sheet aluminium, small pieces of wood, plastics etc. It's NOT for cutting up hunks of metal for the lathe or welder or staircase-sized chunks of timber.

• Be careful of your fingers

• If the blade isn't running correctly in the guides (or you don't know what that means) don't use it.

It's also potentially a great deal more dangerous than the horizontal bandsaw due to higher speeds and the need to put your fingers close to the blade, so don't use it unless you know exactly what you're doing (this particularly applies to the wood blade which may not be fitted, but that doesn't mean the slower, smaller-toothed metal blade is harmless).

If you're just too lazy to get a handsaw and think you'll use a power saw to save a bit of elbow grease, make sure you have more fingers than you really need as you're going to lose some. Can't-be-bothered is not compatible with take-care.

The instructions for use are here. READ THEM.

Two points as mentioned above are especially important :

• To protect your fingers, keep them away from the blade. Ideally, push material through the saw by holding it against the guide and sliding the guide. This keeps the material rigid and your fingers on a known path. If this isn't feasible, hold the material with two hands, so that the cut is going down the middle. This will help avoid any sudden catches which might grab the material and pull your fingers into the path of the blade.

• To protect the bandsaw from damage, it's essential that the blade runs in the guides. This stops it sawing itself to bits, which is what happened to the horizontal bandsaw and why it isn't used much any more. The main way you can tell that it's working correctly is to watch the point where the blade runs through a guide just above the cutting point. It should be not-quite-touching the bearing that's positioned behind it (pictures are in the instructions referenced above). Under cutting pressure, the back of the blade will touch this bearing. If it's anywhere else, it's probably running the teeth against some part of the saw, perhaps under the cover where you can't see it. So stop, because that will ruin it.

Although the blade seemed to be running fine last time I looked, there may be wear, the effect of tough sawing, mindless fiddling or some other reason why it's working one day and not the next - so watch it carefully and don't just keep it making some horrible noise until it's dead.

DO NOT adjust the screws on the top or side unless you understand what they do and how fussy they are on a light duty machine like this. They adjust the blade tension and tracking. It takes a long time to set them correctly and if they're mis-set the blade will wander off the pulleys and ruin the saw, your work, and you. So leave them alone and if it's not working properly, note it on the mailing list.

It's a bit of a fiddly job to get it running smoothly in the guides so don't attempt to change it unless you're prepared to spend a long time messing. If you feel you must, and it ends up working less well than when you started, label it and mention it on the mailing list. Better to admit you need more practice than wreck it for the next person.

The saw is set up with a fairly fine blade (24 tpi) suitable for metal sheet, plastics or PCB material. The slowest cutting speed is recommended for use with this blade : do not speed it up. It will cut wood, but will be tediously slow. I do have blades suitable for cutting thicker wood but they're a lot more dangerous - I'm going to see how many fingers are lost to this one before I fit those.

--Artag 22:55, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

As best as I can measure it the blade is 50 and one eighth of an inch (127.4cm) in circumference. Nominally 50 inches I'm guessing, do they stretch slightly in use? It is 3/8 of a inch wide (9mm) to the points of the teeth. Seems to be an unusual size. There are places that will make blades in custom lengths. Ajp