Slitting saw advice

Briefly

1. Perhaps, slow feed with great care. Best avoided.

2. Yes. This is the normal way to use any cutter

3. NO. This is climbing and will probably break the saw. Simply the saw, or cutter, will try to climb over the work and put excess loads on the tool and machine. In a few cases, such as some high alloy steels that work harden, climbing has to be used.

Cutting details. Assuming the crank is mild steel I would use a maximum cutting speed about 80ft/min (400mm/s). For a 3" slitting saw this would be 100rpm. The feed should be slow, very slow. I do not take a deep cut when using a slitting saw, usually using less than 1mm depth. OK it takes time but I am not on piece work. Use cutting oil/coolant. If in doubt reduce reduce speeds and depth of cut. If the crank is cast iron lower the speeds and do not use cutting oil/coolant.

JA

In general I think 2 is best but I would feed in the other direction so that the backlash is taken up by the saw always pushing against the leadscrew. Of course, I'm not sure if the arrow in your diagram refers to the saw or the job but the principle is the same: always feed so that the pressure from the rotating cutter is pushing back against the job moving towards it.

cheers

Rod

Thanks all for the feedback. As usual one question leads to at least one more. The Conrod is brass, and I have to cut through a thickness of 8mm. Will a slitting saw do this in one pass with a slow feed, or will it need several passes with a shallower cut?

.

Bob,

It should be fine in one pass:

Do bear in mind that the combined effect of the number of teeth and the diameter of the blade will determine the appropriate speed.

I would suggest experimenting on a bit of scrap Brass first, to get a feel for what you're doing.

MichaelG.

Bob, I always initially do a small cut and then start again with another cut, the idea is that the initial cut will stop the slitting saw wandering. 8mm sounds a lot but on Brass not so, slow manual feed and do lubricate it with kero or WD40. The frequent lub. application will also flush out the swarf and keep it cool.

Clive

Bob,

My 10V conrod was my first serious use of a slitting saw.

I may have been over cautious, but I took it VERY gently. Multiple shallow cuts with slow feed worked fine for me.

It did take time,but there were no tears.