- Joined
- Jun 15, 2017
- Messages
- 525
I made a mistake when I said Jodi did the cutting. He filmed another guy cutting. That being said, I don't think you've seen the video.I use cutoff wheels and grinders for certain applicable cuts, But ANY chopsaw, bandsaw etc. would have been quicker, safer and more efficient for what he was cutting.
First of all, I said, "When the job is right for one, it's a great thing to have." I agree it's not for every cut or every shop. He was talking about cutting in the field, not a million-dollar machine shop using the best industrial tools available. He said, "in the field." If you have a forklift and a huge Dumore band saw with a big infeed table, you can definitely cut I-beams faster than the grinder did it in the video. He was comparing a gas torch to a grinder, and the torch fell behind. The torch took about 30 seconds longer because there was so much cleanup. The torch moved faster, but the cut was so bad, a grinder still had to be used to fix it. For rough cuts, the torch would have been better, but he wasn't looking for crude results.
Second, he was cutting fairly big work by hobbyist standards. The smallest things he cut were 6"-square tubes. The biggest things were I-beams about 8" on a side. A 14" chop saw goes to about 5" square, and a dry saw, which I have, does a little more. Maybe people have come up with Rube Goldberg approaches to cut bigger things, but why would you knock yourself out to cut an 8" beam on a little chop saw when you can cut it right where it is, without rotating it, with a grinder? It would never occur to me to try to put an 8" beam on the dry saw. On the other hand, I never cut little things with the grinder.
You say any band saw would be better. Maybe you can cut 6" tubing with a portable band saw if you rotate the tubing and go in from the corners. I don't know. You are never going to get anywhere with an 8" beam. As for horizontals, most hobbyists have 4x7 band saws if they have horizontal saws at all.
Third, you can't cut plate with a chop saw or band saw unless the plate is small or you have a big vertical saw. Most people here don't have a big vertical saw they can shove a 60-pound plate across. I don't have a saw like that. I have a small horizontal, a plasma cutter, a propane torch, and the grinder. I made 18" cuts in 3/8" plate with the grinder in a few minutes, and it was a snap. I used the mill to clean some of them because it was handy, and I found out the unevenness was generally within 0.050". I thought that was a fantastic result for the effort. I can't do that with plasma.
I don't know what's unsafe about a grinder in the hands of a responsible person. Some characters won't use a guard or the right gear, and a lot of them get what they ask for, but people who do it right have no problems.