Cutting Aluminum on a table saw

[Dale Coons]

OK to do this with a carbide blade? I need to cut several 1 1/2" long pieces of 1/8 thick x 1 inch wide stock. Seems like it ought to be ok, but thought I'd check it out first.

d

[Matt Day]

Yup, just use a beater blade.

[Martin Wasner]

I do it all the time. Works pretty well.

[Bill Ryall]

Wear ear protection.

[Myk Rian]

Use a band saw.

[Joe Spear]

I use a Freud non-ferrous blade to cut aluminum. It has a lot of teeth, but any good crosscut cut blade should work. Just be careful about handling the material. There will be little aluminum shavings everywhere and maybe sharp slivers clinging to the stock. Wood splinters are bad enough, but aluminum ones are several steps worse.

[Jerome Stanek]

I would use a miter saw for that

[Lee Schierer]

You can, but...

Wear ear protection, eye protection and gloves. The metal sawdust is really hot and it sticks to everything and can stick to the saw teeth.

[Jim Finn]

I would use tin snips or hack saw to cut 1/8" aluminum.

[Bill Stephenson]

I needed to cut the aluminum track for my track saw,I purchase a non-ferrous blade from Amazon for $17.00 and it worked like a charm. Just be careful of the flying chips.

[Ole Anderson]

Ideally use a carbide blade with a negative hook and plenty of teeth on a miter saw. But a TS will work fine too. Practically, any blade will do the trick for a few cuts of material that small. Hit the teeth with WD40 first to reduce aluminum sticking to the teeth. Aluminum generally won't dull the teeth, no need to use a beater blade. Coming from someone that has processed thousands of pounds of aluminum in my shop cutting everything from 1" x 1/8" stock to solid 2.5" round 6061-t6 with a 10" carbide blade on a chop saw.

[Jerome Stanek]

I use wax on my blades when I cut aluminum. I used to have to trim out drug stores with extruded aluminum at the ceiling and on top of the wall fixture so I cut a lot of it.

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

If you don't have a non ferrous blade, a blade with a triple chip grind is the next best thing.

If it's a harder aluminum like 6061-T6, you can usually cut id with no lubricants. The softer grades are the ones that can cause problems, gumming up and building up on the teeth.

[Keith Weber]

I'll highlight a few important things mentioned above, plus add a couple of points:

1. Wear ear protection.

2. Use WD-40 as a lubricant. I buy it by the gallon and use it in a spray bottle to mill Al in my little machine shop. If you don't, the melted aluminum will re-weld itself to the teeth on your blade, which will effectively make your blade act dull, which will cause heat build-up, which leads to more melting,...

3. Use a blade with lots of teeth, and go slower than you would for wood. Using a rip blade and too fast of a feed rate could replicate a Sawstop firing (no Sawstop needed) on thicker pieces of Al. You're probably not going to do that with 1/8" Al, but just be aware.

4. Speaking of Sawstops... if you have one of those, disable the firing mechanism if you're going to cut aluminum (or at least film yourself with a high-speed camera, so we can see the slow-motion video of your facial expression when the blade hits the Aluminum.)

[TIM CARBAUGH]

Yep. Do it all the time. I have found higher teeth blades work better and I use wax for lubrication. It will quiet the cut and not have any aluminum stick too the teeth. The carrier I made for my BGE was cut almost entirely on my TS.
325994

[Steve Peterson]

Wear ear protection.

And all other protection. Goggles and a face shield would be a good thing. This is one time that I would recommend wearing a long sleeve shirt with tight fitting sleeves. The hot chips will fly everywhere. They make carbide blades especially for cutting aluminum. For occasional cuts, just throw in an old carbide blade.

You might also want to vacuum most of the dust out from the inside of the saw and leave the dust collector off. No point in risking a hot spark starting a fire even though I am not sure if aluminum actually sparks when cutting.

Steve

[Robert Parent]

In addition to the above advice..... I would make sure your saw is correctly aligned. I find wood is a bit forgiving on alignment, aluminum not so much.

Robert

[Steve H Graham]

Tried to reply, but it disappeared.

I have cut thick aluminum (up to 4" square rod) many times. It works fine. I use a triple-chipped blade that was originally used for Corian.

I load the work up with WD40, but you still have to pause frequently and pull back. If you don't, you'll get chip welding. Then you have to stop the saw and pull the aluminum out with pliers.

Resist the temptation to hurry. Even if you take it slow, you will still go much faster than a band saw.

Be very sure you don't let the metal twist or move around. You don't want it to pinch the blade and get thrown. Also, unless you hold it firmly, thin aluminum makes a tremendous amount of noise when you cut it.

Hot chips will fly at you, and you may get a tremendous amount of noise, so wear an apron and ear plugs. Consider a face shield.

[Ole Anderson]

Aluminum does not spark, if it did we would not be using WD40 as a lube. And I use a face shield whenever I cut aluminum.

[Jerome Stanek]

wax works better than wd40

[Al Launier]

Yup, just use a beater blade.
Although I've successfully cut aluminum a number of times with a regular 60 TPI carbide blade, I've never heard of a "beater blade". Please enlighten me - what is a "beater blade"?
Thanks.

[Pat Barry]

A beater blade is a dull blade that doesn't so much cut as beat its way through the material. No, he just means use a blade you don't care so much about ruining. Like up here in Minnesota today would be a good day for my winter beater of a car rather than a new one.

[Wade Lippman]

I had aluminum break several teeth off a brand new saw blade once. Amazon replaced it.

But it is impossible to emphasis strongly enough how terrible the aluminum chips are. Be very careful and do your best to contain them.

[Keith Weber]

wax works better than wd40

Well, that's one opinion. What kind of wax are we talking about here? A paste wax, or a wax-based spray? A cutting lubricant needs to be continually added. It's not a one-time application that's good for a long time. WD-40 can be put into the reservoir of a mister or into a hand-held spray bottle and be generously applied on the fly. A paste wax cannot. Not to mention the pain of trying to apply it to all the cutting teeth/surfaces in a blade or cutter. If you were too generous in its application, you'd be flinging wax chunks all over your shop. I've never heard of a machine shop waxing their cutters or blades, but WD-40 is a fairly common lubricant for cutting aluminum. I cut, turn and mill a lot of aluminum. I can't imagine wax being a better or more practical lubricant. I do like it on my cast iron surfaces in the wood shop, but my machine shop cast surfaces are oiled.

[Ole Anderson]

For years I applied wax to my spinning chop saw blade as that is what I was told to do. It was in a cardboard tube and you would just touch the tube to the spinning blade. Then I talked to a machine shop I was using for things I couldn't do and they said they just used WD40. I started using it with a 1.5" reamer on a 1/2" drill motor to ream out 6061-t6511 2" OD 0.250 wall tube and it worked so well I never looked back.

[Dale Coons]

Wow! Thanks for all the great advice!

d

[Robert Engel]

I would build a miter box fixture and use a sawzall.