Cutting brass disks from sheet

[Fergus OMore]

What do you regard  a cheapo bench bandsaw, please? 
I just adjusted one of these cheap 6 x 4 bandsaws. Bit of a so and so to adjust but once going and adding a few mods, will cut through 37mm cast iron marking out table.  As for the bench stuff, I've heard of the 'better than sliced bread' and 'wouldn't cut sliced bread'

I had an old Burgess, worked it to death, but I doubt if you will find one that is not ready for the scrap head. If you find a good one, you'll enjoy every clank, rattle and bang-- but it will cut metal.

[mattinker]

I have a Clarke 4x6 metal  bandsaw that will cut up railway track! It can be used in the vertical position the standard blade width is 13mm and kerf is too narrow to cut around corners. I use a 10 14tpi variable pitch blade for everything except fine tubing, for which I have 24tpi blade. These saws need tweaking out of the box, it is important to change the oil and clean the worm drive before doing anything else.

There is a yahoo group on which you can find a lot about modding and trouble shooting these saws.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/4x6bandsaw/

Among the things I have done to my saw is I've added coolant using a fountain pump and a hydraulic down feed to make the the cut more controllable.

Regards, Matthew

[awemawson]

Bandsaws tend to fall into two categories, for wood, or for metal. Basic difference is the speed of the blade however blade guides will be more substantial on the metal ones. I use a Startrite one that crosses both areas in that it has a 10:1 gearbox that can be introduced to reduce the speed to that needed for metal cutting. Of course the blades are different for wood than for metal but what ever material you are cutting, the blade pitch will need to be such that at least two, and preferably three, teeth are cutting at one time, so your 3 mm blank would need a fine toothed blade of 1 or 1.5 mm pitch. To cut a good straight line you need not only good guides, but also a deep blade. To cut tight curves you need a shallow blade. So your guides need to be either adjustable or interchangable so that the tooth profile runs outside the guide otherwise the 'set' of the tooth will be squashed by the guide. Guides can be either a slot cut in a very hard material, or an arrangement of ball races where the 'outer' guides the blade. For some reason that I don't understand, the 'slot' variety are considered more accurate (I would have thought it to be the other way round!)

[Alan Haisley]

Chris,

Try a boring head in the mill. Cutter can be unhardened drill rod for a test since that will cut brass just fine - at least once or twice. You will need to experiment with the tip geometry some to get it right but you should be able to cut a variety of either centered or centerless blanks from a sheet with minimum waste. Depending on your boring head, you should be able to get just about any size circle desired. With the cutter shaped right they could be both very accurate and have a finished rim. If you preplan the crossings you should be able to screw the material down to either smooth wood or mdf so that nothing breaks loose just as the cuts finish. (Lots of tiny wood screws.)

Alan

[fcheslop]

Maybe I'm looking at this wrongly.Why not just use a jewelers saw to cut them out then friction turn them between two backing sheets.Very little waste and no centre hole.