Am I Using The Right Bandsaw Blade?
When it comes to bandsaw blades, the options can seem endless! Teeth or no teeth. TPI’s from 1 to who knows how many. Different teeth sizes, styles, and shapes. It can be challenging to find the right combo, but it can also be critical to your operations. Not having the right blade will affect the life of your blade, your efficiency, and the quality of your finished product. And all those factors add up to… money for your business! In this post I’m going to focus on the material you are cutting, blade style, and teeth per inch (TPI) to help you make the right selection. We have over 40 years of experience manufacturing blades and offer a no charge, Blade Efficiency Analysis, which I will talk about more, further down.
Material You Are Cutting
The material you are cutting is the starting point. The type of material you are cutting will help you determine your blade style, TPI, set or no set, heat treated or not. For example, if you are slitting Polyurethane foam for bedding, a popular choice would be a 14TPI V-Tooth blade with no set or heat treat. However, if you are cutting Polyethene foam for packaging, you would want to choose a blade with a set such as a 10TPI Conventional Tooth with a raker set. If you are cutting wood, you will need a heat-treated blade with a set like a 3TPI Hook Tooth, with every tooth set. Other common materials to cut with bandsaw blades are cardboard, plastic, rubber, meat, leather, and metal. Most materials will have multiple blade styles that are acceptable options.
Blade Style
You have a lot of different options when it comes to your blade style and the best choice will depend on the material you are cutting. The most common that we manufacture are Knife Edge, Wavy, V-Tooth, Conventional Tooth, Scallop, Piranha Scallop, Packaging, Flex Back, Butcher, and Timber Slitter. We also stock some Bi-Metal blades for metal cutting. You can find a picture and more detailed descriptions on our website, www.precisionblades.net, under the Products tab.
TPI
Another important choice you have with most blade styles is the TPI. The TPI will affect how fast you can cut, how much dust is produced, and the smoothness of the cut. Generally speaking, higher TPI’s will produce a smoother cut with less dust, however, you will need to cut slower. The opposite is true for lower TPI’s, you can crank up the cutting speed to put out more product in less time, but will get more dust and a rougher cut. So, when selecting a TPI you must consider which of these factors is most important for your application.
We Can Help!
As I mentioned before we have been manufacturing blades for over 40 years. If you would like help sorting through the options, are having issues with your current process, or want see if there are any better options than what you are currently using, we offer a no charge Blade Efficiency Analysis. You can provide us with some basic information and we will help you decide if you should make a change or keep what you currently have. You can click the link, call (662-869-1034), or email (orders@precblades.com) us to get the short form to fill out! We look forward to hearing from you. You can also follow us on LinkedIn to learn more about Precision Blades, Inc and how we can help!
