What sort of steel section are you cutting and with what?

I have only cut metal with industrial machines and personally wouldn’t use anything in my workshop other than a band saw. Most blade manufacturers can supply metal cutting blades but are specific for material being cut and speed of machine.

Usually these saws run at much slower rpm than the max allowed for this blade. In the low hundreds and with coolant, plus the work must be really well clamped.

we’ve been here before – the evolution chop saw will cut mild steel certainly upto 15mm but after finishing the job I’d bought it for I put it away and bought a bandsaw – the chop saw is not suitable unless in a large workshop as it throws red hot bits a long distance – also the blades are not it appears suitable for stainless steel (though neither is my bandsaw – I cut these with a small angle grinder with 1mm cutting disks)

That 14" blade in the picture will take some considerable power / torque to drive it through mild steel, let alone austenitic stainless.

We cut a lot of stainless pipe where I used to work and the go to tool for the larger sizes was a bandsaw. For smaller tubes we used a Pedrazzoli Brown chop saw (two speed, always on low speed) without coolant to avoid contaminating the tube with oils or washing chips into the bore. This meant that the saw blades needed regularly changing because they lost their edge or clogged up with chips in the gullets. We had a pile of used blades and a pile of fresh blades and just changed them over as required. When the pile of used blades was somewhere between 20 and 40 we sent them off for resharpening which also cleared the gullets. Since they only needed minimal sharpening when used like this it was cheaper per blade to get them sharpened in large batches. We had a lot of money invested in all those blades but it was worth it when compared to the cost rate in the department and the potential cost of delays to workflow.

Martin C

The saw shown in the link is good for 1/2" (13MM) steel plate, but how will you feed the plate. It sounds more like a plasma cutter job.

Could you clarify what machine your Rage blade was fitted to, Jon? Presumably not an Evolution Rage mitre saw, unless by a "slow cut" you mean a slow rate of downfeed.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 01/08/2023 23:09:32

Naive question from me – what are metal-cutting chop saws for?

I own a mitre saw for woodwork, where it is extremely useful for quickly cutting largish sections of wood – up to about 2 by 4" Skirting, cabinet frames, pelmets, floorboards etc. Never done it, but I guess it would do plastic barge boards and soffits a treat. Not bad for PVC drainpipes. On the other hand it's not good for fine work like picture frames and PVC guttering didn't go well.

I imagine a metal chop-saw to be useful in much the same way. They're for cutting bigger box section, pipe, and sheet rapidly to size for structural work rather than making small numbers of precision parts. So not much use in my workshop, where a band-saw is about the right size for most work, and it runs quietly and doesn't make much mess. For larger lumps I've started using an angle grinder – outside only, because it's so noisy and messy.

The tools I buy are decided by the type of work I need to do, and at the moment I don't think a chop-saw is worth having. Maybe if I ran a busy workshop and got my metal from a shed full of chunky scrap. I'd definitely buy a chop-saw if I wanted to build a 40 metre antenna tower, where a few hundred cross-braces have to be cut to size. But I don't.

Am I right to think a chop-saw isn't for me?

Dave

Look up 'project farm' on youtube – he tested lots. I remember makita coming out OK but… I have a bad memory.

I have used one of the Evolution metal cutting saws for years, the 255mm diameter version. When first bought was used to cut lengths of 50x20mm mild steel, whilst not quite as fast as cutting wood, wasn't much difference.

BUT!

What the saw will not do is cut rusty metal. If the metal has a layer of rust on it, in my case inside roled amd welded tube, the balde will only last for a dozen or so cuts. The flaky rust is hard and destroys the tips. If you have ever tried to oxy acetylene cut rusty steel then you will know that that doesn't work at all. If the metal just has a film of corrosion that can be removed with WD40 and wire wool then ok.

The comment about it chucking very hot chips everywhere is true! Use some sacking to catch them.