Cutting Aluminum on a table saw

[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.