Tablesaw blade failure

[Carl Beckett]

What am I doing wrong?

The saw is a MM CU300. Blade is a Freud Premier Fusion. I purchased off Amazon.

The blade has seen VERY little use (and hour total run time??). I cut some cherry. Some white oak. All relatively small pieces (1.5in thick max)

Today I noticed 4 teeth have went missing. 4. At different points around the circumference.

Have one tooth come off on a blade years ago, but this is severe and this blade is taken out of service.

What am I doing wrong? What causes a tooth to come off?

Seems pretty unusual that 4 have gone missing, and at different positions around the dia seems not due to hitting something.

Not a cheap blade. Would return it if thats an option but wouldnt know where to send.

The main thing is to ensure I am not doing anything crazy that will repeat on the next blade. Which is....uggh... didnt want to spend $$ on another blade.

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[Jim Morgan]

What do the cut surfaces look like? Any embedded metal?

[John Kananis]

Looks to me like you definitely hit something. The tooth in the second pic for instance, it took a chunk of the "landing pad" with it, it didn't just come off the weld.

[Edward Weber]

I would return it,
You can usually find an Amazon drop off location or get an RMA.
It looks as if the carbide broke in a couple of them, it could have just been a bad batch.
I would also send the photos and info to Freud,
I would say this is a rare occurrence, I've been using Freud blades exclusively for about 20 years, and I've never lost a tooth. I would definitely check what you've cut for embedded materials as James mentioned

[Carl Beckett]

Am pretty confident I didnt hit metal. Maybe a knot (maybe, but even there nothing major). Definitely no metal in the wood given the projects I have done with it (very little use makes this easy to confirm) - the latest project being some cherry bar stools.

Can not remember binding.

As you say, does look like carbide failure more than a failed braze. Which would suggest hitting something hard. I might have expected adjacent tooth failure if hitting something but it might depend on which tooth was 'high'.

[Tom M King]

Looks like it found a nail.

[Rick Potter]

No expert here, but logically speaking, it seems that if you hit a nail or whatever the damaged teeth should be contiguous. Or am I wrong?

[Mel Fulks]

I’m joinin’ the posse ! They gonna haftuh make it right !

We don’t like bad brazin’ and might have to do some reaprazen on their teeth!

[Tom M King]

I've hit enough to say that there is no single way that teeth will suffer. I keep some Irwin blades for cutting questionable stuff. Often you can't tell by the outside, but you can always tell on a cut face.

[John Kananis]

Both top and bottom photos have damage on consecutive teeth. Can't see all the adjacent teeth in the other pics.

[Mel Fulks]

I bought a router bit from them years ago. “ One flute flew over the uncool mess”…. They sent out a good one quickly.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Sure looks like contact with something other than wood to me too. Common nails usually do not do that much damage. Drywall screws are good at taking a tooth off. Some of the steel disc is shaved off too. I guess that could have been done by the dislodged carbide? Nice images by the way. Sorry about your blade.

[Dave Sabo]

I've chipped teeth on knots before. It was 200+ yr. old pitch pine , so they were like iron. And it's not unusual for multiple teeth to get lost - whether via faulty brazing -or- striking something harder than the wood.

Your last pic leads me to believe you hit something too. Bad brazing would not have caused the tooth to shatter like shown.

[Mark Wooden]

It could be one tooth cracked off and the others hit it
Knots do sometimes break teeth, especially the thin kerf blades

[Larry Frank]

I have that blade and have not had that problem. One tooth looks like a failure with the braze. I can not tell with the others. I would contact Freud and ask them to analyze the failures. Because it is a high ATB the teeth are somewhat fragile as they are not well supported at the tip

I do not use it on thick cuts because it has low side clearance. I use a glue line rip for thicker material

[Kevin Jenness]

Sure looks like you hit something embedded in the wood, but bad carbide/brazing could be a contributing factor. I have never had that kind of damage without knowingly hitting embedded metal. If you are positive that is not the case send it back and see what happens.

[Carl Beckett]

Some more pics. It does look like the damaged teeth are more on one side than naught.

And looks like carbide failure not the braze. I got out the magnifier to see if I could find any micro cracks on the good teeth. Nothing other than some uniform ridges from sharpening (go horizontal across the tooth face).

Hitting something seems like the most likely culprit, but not obvious to me when this happened (of course, a lot of things are not obvious to me...)

Added a pic of a good tooth - the small shiny bevel you see is part of the sharpening, not damage. And I will say, all the surrounding teeth are still sharp as heck.

In the past I have hit a nail and a good sharp blade goes through it. Drywall screw - no chance - I would know if something like that.

I will send them a note to learn what the expert experience might suggest. But am not trying to get a replacement for something that is within normal expectation, I can not see any quality issues with the blade.

But it bugs me not understanding what happened, since I am going to put another blade on it and do not want to repeat again - gets expensive fast (already...!). Not to mention safety.

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[Rod Wolfy]

The other interesting thing is that the damage is all on the side away from the fence. You weren't using a miter bar by chance?

[Dave Sabo]

Any chance someone else used your saw ?

[Jim Dwight]

Rod's thought is similar to mine. I would carefully examine the saw to see if there is any way the blade contacted it. I am not familiar with your saw but I would take the blade off and the throat plate and look at what it potentially could have touched at all heights where this blade was used. Also the miter bar.

If it didn't hit something in the wood or the saw then it was just a rare bad blade from Freud. I've mostly used Freud blades (including at least one Fusion) in the last 50 years or so I've had a table saw and never had any blade damage that was attributable to me hitting metal in the wood. No chips from knots or anything that the blade should be able to cut. Small bits of metal, like staples, normally do not result in visible damage.

[Carl Beckett]

Any chance someone else used your saw ?

There is a question.... I do have young adults around.

Interference with other parts of the saw is what I am trying to determine. Nothing so far - and the miter is a F&F jig out of plastic/birch with an Al slot that doesnt touch. But will double check all that.

Freud customer service was great and they will inspect the blade with the engineering team and offer any insights.

In the meantime I do have a different blade I can put on it...

[Frank Martin]

Once I damaged a blade on the Minimax CU300 I have when the splitter was too low and contacted blade teeth when the saw was turned on.

[Jim Becker]

Once I damaged a blade on the Minimax CU300 I have when the splitter was too low and contacted blade teeth when the saw was turned on.

That's a good point, Frank...easy to happen if it comes loose, too, if the bolts are not snugged up.

[Carl Beckett]

I did send a note and pictures to Freud customer service asking for insight on failure mode. They were very quick to respond and asked me to return the blade, which I did.

Today I received a new one in the mail. Unsolicited.

Really can not ask for any better customer service, it would have been very easy for them (and I would have accepted it) if they just said operator misuse.

Based on this experience I would not hesitate to buy from them in the future.

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[Justin Rapp]

I did send a note and pictures to Freud customer service asking for insight on failure mode. They were very quick to respond and asked me to return the blade, which I did.

Today I received a new one in the mail. Unsolicited.

Really can not ask for any better customer service, it would have been very easy for them (and I would have accepted it) if they just said operator misuse.

Based on this experience I would not hesitate to buy from them in the future.

492053

Any teeth missing on the new on yet? Just wondering if they had some bad welds on a batch of them.

[Bob Borzelleri]

Good company. It’s good to see that the family got into a business model that didn’t require customers to lay on a couch and free associate.

[Lee Schierer]

I did send a note and pictures to Freud customer service asking for insight on failure mode. They were very quick to respond and asked me to return the blade, which I did.

Today I received a new one in the mail. Unsolicited.

Really can not ask for any better customer service, it would have been very easy for them (and I would have accepted it) if they just said operator misuse.

Based on this experience I would not hesitate to buy from them in the future.

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I had mishap with a Feud blade a number of years ago that took out one tooth and damaged a second. The damage to the blade was clearly my fault. I sent it back for repairs and they sent a brand new blade.

[Dwayne Watt]

I suspect they will find the carbide steel is too hard and, thus, very brittle (they will never tell you, though). You can see by the photos that the fractures are brittle in nature. It appears to me that the heat affected zone where the tooth is brazed onto the blade is not fracturing which suggests that material was tempered back a bit in the manufacturing process (tempering reduces hardness). This would be expected. I don't know their process but given the broken teeth are not adjacent to one another, I would wager it was the individual teeth that are defective prior to being brazed onto the blade. It is very likely you did hit a hard knot and that impact was enough to fracture the teeth. In my opinion, this was a defective saw blade and it was admirable/proper for Freud to replace it.

[glenn bradley]

I had a similar experience with Freud Customer Service. A new blade showed an odd discoloration and coating failure when cleaned. Same cleaning method I have used for many years. The blade was deemed safe to put back into use but they sent me a new one anyway. My failure was near as catastrophic but the response was just as good. Kudos to the few companies who still know how to treat their customers.