Cutting aluminum on a table saw

[Paul Alciatore]

Had to laugh about the sweater. Glad my shop has heat. I like the disposable, paper lab coats. If they get tangled in a rotating machine, the paper will just tear instead of drawing me into it. And no laundry to worry about. I hate household chores.

230 Volts is about my limit for working on a live circuit. Of course, each leg is only 115 V above neutral/ground. I have been around some serious Voltages, like 25K, 30K, and even 40K Volts. With those you take some serious precautions. Always a safety man standing by. And power is off before you even open the cabinet. Then touch everything with a ground rod leaving it hanging on the conductor you will be working on.

I am getting older now and not as nimble as I once was. I have an outlet in my kitchen that needs attention; probably replacement. Just 115 V, but I will be turning the power off and have my son standing by while I work.

I wore my nice sweater to the shop one day, where I cut some al. Was picking chips out of it for weeks afterwards. Now, IF I REMEMBER TO, I wear my shop coat. I shake that one out easily, but still brush chips out of my hair for weeks afterwards. Eye protection is pretty much mandatory, but a full face shield is better. Now I'm sporting a beard, so the game is on again-

And yeah, I'm not too keen on wiring live with 480 volts, though I almost always do with 110. I'd rather cut aluminum

[Paul Alciatore]

In spite of being aware of the danger and working very carefully, I have had wood kick back while ripping it in a radial arm saw. It shot clear across the shop. I was very glad I was not in the line of fire. Glad I DELIBERATELY CHOOSE not to be in the line of fire.

Kick back is serious. Take all the other precautions, but be SURE to stand to the side while cutting. Better it be embedded in the shop wall than your gut. Or slightly lower.

That is good advise to keep the blade at its maximum height to lower the kickback angle.

[gellfex]

That is the wickedest radius cutting tool I have ever seen. But I wonder how well it works with smaller radii and more tool stick-out. Or do you have a smaller version for them?

Thanks. I needed one that would do over 5" dia on a Logan 200, and there was really nothing. I made a tool post for internal diameters, and always planned to make a smaller radius arm if needed, but I found that for the dense modeling foam like in the pic the jig was stable enough for down under 1" dia.

Turning these acrylic lens shapes for cosmetics models was a major project for that jig.

[darryl]

I like a radius tool that mounts on the ways. That way you are assured that it's centered every time it's mounted, and you get the maximum diameter ability out of it. You don't have any axial adjustability with that, but you can always rig up a tailstock push rod to have fine control over it. Obviously you loosen it before adjusting it, but then with it tight again you have full rigidity, independent of the cross slide and carriage.

The lens thing I find particularly interesting. When I was turning some concaves one day, I had made a pivoting lever with the cutter on one end, and the other end mounted on a pivot set up in the tailstock. On the carriage I set up a guide, much like you would find on a wood lathe to rest your tools on as you carve. Of course I set the height to put the cutter on center. The length from the cutter tip to the pivot hole sets the degree of curvature. As with a wood lathe, you push the cutter back and forth by hand. At the pivot end you need to keep the lever from popping off the pivot pin. That did a pretty good job of machining, but I wanted a better finish on the aluminum I was working with. I could have set up a motorized polishing pad on the lever, but I didn't get that far. It would have done a good job of creating the reflective surface I wanted- but it would also have produced only a circular shape. To make the reflector work differently, I could have offset the pivot point. That would have made the shape either come to a bit of a tit in the center, or to a dimple in the center. Either way it would produce a different reflection pattern.

It was very dependent on the shape of the cutter as to how easily you could hand-control the cutter across the work. If you were making a deep dish, there's be a lot of material to removed, and you'd probably want to start with a normal setup and remove most of the material in the conventional way.

With the radius tool as shown, you can get creative with how you shape and mount the cutter such that you can turn very close to the chuck jaws without anything interfering. This was one of the first problems I had to overcome when turning a ball so I could get almost a complete ball with only a small pip to remove afterwards. As usual, I wanted to keep the overhang out of the chuck as short as practical.

Having said all that, mounting the radius tool on the ways assures a round ball can be made, but you can't then turn a football shape.

[Bob La Londe]

230 Volts is about my limit for working on a live circuit. Of course, each leg is only 115 V above neutral/ground. I have been around some serious Voltages, like 25K, 30K, and even 40K Volts. With those you take some serious precautions. Always a safety man standing by. And power is off before you even open the cabinet. Then touch everything with a ground rod leaving it hanging on the conductor you will be working on.

I was working for another contractor one day, and we had a situation where it would take a couple days to get somebody out, or he could put his hand in a live cabinet. I don't recall all the details because I was working on something else when he said, "Hey Bob. Grab that 2x4 and come over here." Basically he wanted me to knock him away if he got zapped and couldn't move. Nothing exciting happened.

Another time I was working night shift at a cotton gin after a clog in one of the mosses (big cotton drier drum) one of the big 440V motors wouldn't start up. I was the front press operator, but when the gin is down everybody works where they are needed, so I was up on the catwalk fetching and grabbing for the head ginner. We pulled the cover off a fuse box, and he started checking it with a little el cheapo meter in continuity. I already knew it would blow the meter if he actually found a bad fuse that way. As I was turning away out of the corner of my eye I saw him put the meter across two legs. The sound of the explosion was dwarfed only by the flash. It lit the gin up like it was daylight (if daylight was blue) for a fraction of a second. I turned back to look. He was holding the exploded and partially melted blob by one lead wire when he said, "I bought this at your dad's hardware store. Do you think he will make good on it."

[Jammer Six]

Speaking as carpenter and life long woodworker, the worst thing about cutting aluminum on a table saw is that it throws metal into the dust collection.

[Rich Carlstedt]

All i can say, is I have used a table saw on AL done dozens of times, but will NEVER ever use a side guide !
That is asking for trouble,
Rich

[darryl]

Side guide- as in the fence? Had my fun with that. Making long cuts heats the metal on the cut side, expanding it away from the fence and jamming into the side of the blade, making things worse. If the fence is long, like the 5 ft long one I use at work, this problem becomes much worse. I usually clamp a short piece to the fence, say about a foot long, so I don't have this problem.

One thing you do NOT want to do is leave a short cutoff piece between the blade and the fence. Wood is one thing because when the piece jams, some of the wood is sawed away instantly, slightly lessening the speed of the piece as it sails past your face. Aluminum will catch and be shot out at twice the speed of light- That's where a sled is so handy.

[Rich Carlstedt]

yeah darryl, you have it, a fence ! (which i called a side guide)
And yes have a stop set up before the aluminum hits the blade .. but never the two shall meet !
Rich

[junkaddict]

I use a circular saw with a non ferrous metal blade. Probably not the control of a table saw, but it works.

[Bob La Londe]

I use a circular saw with a non ferrous metal blade. Probably not the control of a table saw, but it works.

I have a 9" circular saw sold as a metal cutting saw. I've cut aluminum and steel with it. Stainless steel does a number on the blades, but it can be done. Mild steel is no big deal.

[darryl]

I cut some aluminum on the table saw today. There were cross cuts, then rip cuts. I didn't use a sled, but I did cut a chunk out of a piece of scrap plywood to use as a jig- what I was left with was an L shape. One side of the L goes against the fence, and the material to be cut nests into the L. That means the aluminum doesn't slide along the fence, and the bottom part of the L keeps the material perpendicular to the blade. When the pieces I was cutting were cut to length, I then turned them and used the same jig to make the longitudinal cuts. These pieces were around 6 inches long, cut from 3 inch square tubing, so it fit within the parameters of the jig. Because my blade won't cut the full 6 inches, I made one cut, rotated the piece, made 2nd cut, etc. Simple, fairly safe, and accurate. No binding. For the longitudinal cuts I was worried about the tubing collapsing as the first cut completed- meaning the tubing might have wanted to close up on the blade as it carried through. That can happen, but it didn't this time. If it had happened, it would have messed up my cut line, but with a good hold on the jig I would not have lost control of things.

When I cut like this, I worry mostly about the piece that's nested, and not about the loose piece that can drift away from the blade. I think the most difficult part of cutting relatively small pieces is figuring out how to hold the nested piece. There's always a way.

And I do have to add- I used my aluminum blade, and the pieces barely got warm. Right blade for the job. I don't want to keep harping on that, but I think it's important.

[The Metal Butcher]

I consider myself a man of the world.
Very versatile and able to handle almost any situation.
But I am not man enough to cut aluminum on the table saw.
I would rather re-wire a 480volt panel live than cut AL on a table saw.

-Doozer

Something something about fear that you're always posting.

Here's where you run out of balls? :/

I'll cut steel. Old video, I don't find this to be worth the money for the blades. But make of it what you will.

[Lew Hartswick]

I've done afair bit of aluminum cutting on my redial arm saw using a 0 rake carbide tooth blade over the years. I use paraffin (the kind that use to be used on top of jelly preserves not the kind the British call that) :-)

[jdunmyer]

My cousin had a bad kickback on his table saw while cutting wood. IIRC, his arm got broken. While in the ER, the nurse asked him how it happened, and when he said "table saw", she said, "oh yeah, we get 2 or 3 of those every week.

Back in the late 60's, I was a checkout technician on rather complex control systems, with the sort of cabinet that you walked in. It was all 120 volt relays and step switches, and the relays were telephone type, using sockets with taper pin connections. IE: close quarters. My boss told me, "if you don't get bit once a day, you're not working hard enough". He was only half joking.

Since reading some stories since then, I'm not nearly so blase about getting bit by 120 volts. Although I have 480 volts in my shop, I've never been bit by that and hope to continue that record.