Welding Tips and Tricks

My portaband has been growing on me lately. I fabricated a bench grinder stand and it was great cutting into 3/8 plate and so on.

An issue I always have with it is drift. Is there any tips and tricks to prevent this? A good example is maxing out the throat depth of 5 inches or whatever on 3/8 plate and keeping it on my scribe line. Once the drift starts is it too far gone.

Cheers.

Trick #1, make sure you have a SHARP blade. a dull blade will drift worse than anything. Trick #2, make sure you have the right pitch (tooth count) for the material you are cutting. There is no one size fits all for band saw blades. The rule of thumb is you want 2-3 teeth in contact with the work at any given time, so for 3/8ths material you need roughly a 12 TPI blade. Higher tooth count for thinner material and visa versa. Trick #3 use the best quality blades you can find. Lenox is about the best I think. Trick #4, if your portaband allows for adjustment of the guide rollers, check them for proper alignment. Many saws don't have this adjustment though. Trick # 5, less feed pressure. The more you push the material into the blade, the more it will deflect.

Louie1961 wrote:Trick #1, make sure you have a SHARP blade. a dull blade will drift worse than anything. Trick #2, make sure you have the right pitch (tooth count) for the material you are cutting. There is no one size fits all for band saw blades. The rule of thumb is you want 2-3 teeth in contact with the work at any given time, so for 3/8ths material you need roughly a 12 TPI blade. Higher tooth count for thinner material and visa versa. Trick #3 use the best quality blades you can find. Lenox is about the best I think. Trick #4, if your portaband allows for adjustment of the guide rollers, check them for proper alignment. Many saws don't have this adjustment though. Trick # 5, less feed pressure. The more you push the material into the blade, the more it will deflect.

Thanks! These are great tips, as I am having the same concerns. Not to hijack, but... I'm a newb with a dewalt and a swag table.

What are signs that my blade is dull?
How long should blades last?

I'm sure the answers will have a depends, but any tips or things to look at or watch for?

I've got a Dewalt. It can be tricky to find the correct blade dimension for it. So far the morse brand has worked. I've got 20-24 tph blades. Sounds like I should pick up some coarser blades for the plate then.

If you run your finger on the side of the blade, the wide side. You should be able to feel the sharp edges of the teeth. When there dull the tip of the teeth will still be sharp and pointy long after the side gets broke down. That’s usually when I’ll change my blade for critical cuts. But I throw em back on till the teeth are totally rounded or even half gone. SS tends to eat blades twice as fast as carbon. I also usually slow my speed down to about 3 on my dewalt with a new blade for critical stuff. Almost no pressure, just let the saw cut.