Cold cut saw noisy when cutting 2" square .083-wall A500 steel tubing

I was out at DMS on Saturday, and was cutting some square tubing for a new work table. During the cut, at various times, the saw was much louder than I’ve ever heard it be, with some minor metal squealing.

@BobKarnaugh was around, and we checked the hardness with the files. It was softer than Rockwell 55, for sure. I think we went one file below 55 and it still cut it.

I did notice the coolant was not flooding very well halfway through my cuts, and I added approx 2 gal of premix from the bucket. This fixed the coolant flood issue, but made no difference with the noise.

Could it be time for a new blade?

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Possibly. Some times the metal resonates loudly. Also, need to check the air pressure, it needs to be above 100psi, preferably around 120psi+, it makes the saw grip better. @TBJK once found that the pressure at the compressor had been dialed down below 100pis, when he put it up to 115~120psi, the saw cut much differently.

I’ll look at it tomorrow and do a test on that 1" x 1" mild steel and see how it works. Also once you get under .100" inch it is hard for the saw to get multi teeth on the cut so you pick up vibration as each tooth clears and the next one engages. If 2 or or more are engaged at a time then it reduces the vibration as one is still cutting when the other engages. The thinner the material the louder it can get.

A500 shouldn’t give it a problem as it is not a high Cr or Ni alloy which tend to be harder and work harden - but that thin it should be removing the work harden material away fast enough to avoid a “hard spot”.

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I had to re-read that a couple times. I thought you were cutting AR500 steel for a moment or two. It does tend to squawk some times. Especially if you hit that resonate frequency. It may be time to bite the bullet & buy another fine tooth blade.

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I think we have one, I’ll see if I can find it today.

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I checked the pressure at the regulator, it was about 125 psi.

Tim and I talked, that blade has lasted about 5-6 months, so we’ll order a new one.

So one thing that I found is that if I increased the head feed speed while running through the vertical side walls is the “chatter” went mostly away. This was done on the front of the machine with the dial.

Once we have two of these blades, can the idle one be sent to the same place that woodshop uses to replace broken teeth and re sharpen their carbide blades?

I’m not sure these can have teeth replaced, but would like to find out.

Unlike the saws blades in Wood Shop these blades do not have carbide tips brazed onto them. They are made Molybdenum High Speed Steels (HSS) designated as M1 or M2, ours are are M2.

They can be resharpened but not sure about replacing teeth. Need to find out. Our saw will take.

Then to get the size and number of teeth for the replacement blade. Forgot to do that last night.

We do have a certificate for 1 fee re sharpening from where we bought them from. They only charge 15$ to sharpen them.

Based on that, I suspect we are far less likely to shatter teeth anyway. Getting them sharpened might not affect this exact cut, but generally should help considerably.

Is it worse than fake nails on an old school black chalk board?:nerd_face: