One question:
Where were the saw and blades manufactured?
Where were the saw and blades manufactured?
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Small bandsaw eating through sawblades
- Thread starter MrCrankyface
- Start date
Yes, that might be the cause.
I found with mine that hanging a 2' length of 1/2" chain on the tension knob speeds up the cutting on most stock with no ill affects. Have also used cutting oil without issues, though lately I've just been cutting dry. Still running the blade that came on it used, and after hundreds of cuts it still cuts well, other than missing a few teeth when I got it. Mike
another thing to look for is any thing is rubbing the blade that should not be..... My old floor model kept loosing blades at the welds and we found after removing the lower cover there was a "guide" that was out of position and you could tell by the wear the blade was rubbing only adding to the heat. We also found a piece of metal embedded on the "wheel" when we had the cover off...
When I got my saw there was no down speed adjustment mounted to control it. I lower the frame and once it makes contact with the metal to be cut it has the weight of the frame. I just keep the guides close as to support the blade and keep it from bowing. Been doing it this way for over 20 years with no problems at all.
No info on where the saw is manufactured but the Swedish manual(which I'm inclined to trust since it's from a reliable brand) states that it's living up to a whole bunch of different EU standards.
I would guess it's manufactured in Asia which doesn't necessarily say anything about quality if that's where you're going with this.
Blades have been both no-name(probably China) and brand names from Sweden and Germany.
This saw has some kind of spring inside the hinge, so it's applying 0 weight onto whatever it's cutting.
Will implement some kind of bar with moveable weight like some older/cheaper hacksaws have, should be good enough to just get some amount of pressure on the blade/part.
Whole thing is filthy so went at it with brushes and degreaser..
Thoroughly cleaned both blade guides.
The back wheel looks like it's damaged but when I tried to check the damage with my nail, it's not even noticeable.
There was however a lot of crud all around this, would surprise me if that caused it to lock up at random occasions.
Used two parallels to try to align both the blade and the miter angle at the same time, took a few tries but I think I got it pretty close.
Did a quick test cut at lowest blade speed(120fpm-ish).
The cutoff was noticeably warm so it's possible this blade is quite dull by now but at least the cut was perfectly square, as perfect as could tell with a precision square on such a small object at least.
Needed to adjust the rollers quite a lot as they had excessive play and I suspect that has let the blade wobble/topple side to side.
And yes, it's a really fine-pitched blade, I usually use 10-14 but decided to try this to see if it'd lose less teeth.
Gonna try to be a bit more scientific and monitor what's happening when/if it starts messing up again.
There is place in the next town over from me who specialize in bandsaw blade of all shapes and sizes. The owner usualy drop my blades they make up for me off at my home. I told him about my small bandsaw also braking one blade after the other and I did all the adjustments I could and said to me that the problem lies with the small OD of the wheels,making the radius too small, that is on these small bandsaws. I tend to believe him. And guess what......just befor I saw this post,I broke yet another blade........again. I am so sick and tired of blades braking way before the teeth are worn. I did everything the OP posted and everything the members here suggested when I asked about the same problem a while back,but they keep on breaking. This is the one I have. A real cheapie
I have heard similar stories, where the small radius of the wheels will basically fatigue the metal faster than the teeth wears.
Maybe one day when I have that magical thing called "free time" I'll build one with larger wheels.
I understand what you were told, but I just can't agree. My money is on one of the wheels if not both is/are cocked. Broken blades were improperly annealed welds or too much material being ground off when smoothing the weld joint. Possibly FPM is too fast
Milwaukee, Porter Cable and the rest use 44 7/8"blades on 6" diameter wheels on there portable saws with no problem. If the blades you are using are an 1/8" either way ( 45 or 44 3/4") that's a problem.I have heard similar stories, where the small radius of the wheels will basically fatigue the metal faster than the teeth wears.
Maybe one day when I have that magical thing called "free time" I'll build one with larger wheels.
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