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Can a ferrous blade be used in a non-ferrous cold saw?


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Welcome aboard, your sign in is WAY too clunky for a handle, can we call you something easier? If you'll put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many members live within visiting distance.

All things being equal(ish) always go for the more powerful machine. Go with Thomas's advice, give Jet a call and find out the real bonafide poop.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Good Morning SE,

Use a Ferous blade in one saw, Use a non-ferous blade in a completely different saw. Thermite is aluminum and iron/steel powder. You don't want to find out accidently what a Thermite fire is like. Sparks from cutting steel "could be" enough to give you a very bad day!! Don't mix the material in one saw!! Period!!

Neil

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Well if it runs at a higher speed then I would NOT try it on steel.

KiloWatt Hours  a unit of energy and often a good measurement of how big a motor is rather than stall horsepower beloved by sales people.

 the first hit when I googled it was Wikipedia:

The kilowatt hour (symbol kWh, kW⋅h or kW h) is a unit of energy equal to 3.6 megajoules. If energy is transmitted or used at a constant rate (power) over a period of time, the total energy in kilowatt hours is equal to the power in kilowatts multiplied by the time in hours.

Unit of: Energy

Symbol: kW⋅h

Unit system: Non-SI metric

English Engineering units: ≈ 2,655,224 ft⋅lbf

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Read up on speeds and feeds when cutting metals. Steels use much slower speeds than nonferrous does because nonferrous is a lot easier to cut. You could probably go the other way though and use the ferrous saw for nonferrous. It is usually better to go slower than faster when machining metals, but there are some exceptions.

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There is no single answer.  Typically a cold saw for ferrous runs pretty slow speed, and that's usually based on blade diameter.  However, there are now a new class of higher speed ferrous blades out there---designed to run about 1500 RPM for the typical saw and much higher for more specialized cutting.

We run nonferrous saws on aluminum tubing at close to 7000 rpm with specialized blades that cut nearly burrless.  So, as you can see there are more exceptions to the rule than there are rules.

Except don't make thermite always applies.

Many nonferrous saws are also built much lighter because the stress various parts typically see is lower--so you want to check out the differences before you assume you can cut 2" chrome moly shafting on that saw designed for aluminum just by using a lower speed or cutting more slowly.

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On 2/20/2019 at 9:56 PM, swedefiddle said:

Use a Ferous blade in one saw, Use a non-ferous blade in a completely different saw. Thermite is aluminum and iron/steel powder. You don't want to find out accidently what a Thermite fire is like. Sparks from cutting steel "could be" enough to give you a very bad day!! Don't mix the material in one saw!! Period!!

Right you are Neil though thermite is al powder and iron oxide, while not quite thermite an aluminum fire is beyond serious badness. I'm guilty of a serious brain xxxx forgetting that one. 

Don't mix metals. Good catch, thanks.

Frosty The Lucky.

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