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Post by Bob on Feb 17, 2022 12:18:28 GMT -5
Be careful not to tighten the belt too much, it can put undue stress on the bearings and wear them quicker Definitely true. My problem is I have not yet built a belt/pulley guard for the saw, so oily mist gets all over both and there is some slippage when under cutting load. I need to get that guard built of course to fix that and increase safety. Last night I mic'd the blade core thickness. It's .065" and obviously that helps it be so stiff. The rim of course is wider than that. If I can't get more of these wonderful blades for a while, I will need to put back on some of those thin lapidary blades that flex a lot and aren't planar flat anymore. I have given some thought to mounting some type of guide mechanism with roller bearings on it just under the saw table to stabilize these thin blades. Band saws have these. It would not take anything real complicated or large and could be held up where it needs to be by tapping some machine screws into the aluminum saw table. But I speculate there is a reason lapidary saws don't have these for thin blades. Sawdust is fine and flies all over the place and not much goes into these guides (I used to be a cabinetmaker). But those small random rocks chips and flakes that just happen and that fall down alongside the blade and into the oil in the tank would probably interfere with any kind of guide arrangement. One test I could make would be to not bother with the roller bearings but just glue up some hardwood or plastic guides temporarily under there and see if the blade was kept from flexing back and forth so much.
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Post by Bob on Mar 28, 2022 11:39:49 GMT -5
In preparation for making a tilting table to make changing oil very fast, I have moved all electricals from beneath the saw to behind it and will post some photos. This presented some challenges.
But I wanted to post about this blade = 10" BD-303P. I got one of these because HP was out of the agate eater blades. This blade is fantastic! It's thin, yet not so thin as to be all flexy, though it's not near as stiff at the HP agate eater. But man does it cut fast! I am going to see how fast it wears and how long it lasts, but based on my first 1.5 hrs of free-hand cutting, it has made the best impression on me yet of any blade. It must have been a tiny bit bigger than 10", because I had to shim up my blade guard a little bit, but that's fine with me.
I can't remember what it was, but a year ago when reading about all the oil cutting 10" blade choices, something I had read had steered me away from this blade--my error apparently. It might have been me thinking that the laser cuts would make it dangerous for my fingers, but after using it I think they are so tiny where they are in the rim that it's virtually the same for finger safety as a continuous rim. If anyone has experienced with this blade, I would enjoy hearing.
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