Troubleshooting Your Bandsaw

• Jan, 14 2020
• Blog
• 0 comment

While we do our best to offer our customers the clearest information possible on efficient bandsaw cutting- things can still go wrong. Unfortunately, due to their size and capabilities, fixing a bandsaw is not always cheap. Nonetheless, we can give you some industry tips and tricks for troubleshooting your machine before you have to call in the professionals. As always, if you ever have any questions pertaining to your bandsaw efficiency we are more than happy to help you out. Give us a call today!

Here are some solutions to everyday problems you may have when cutting various materials.

Stripping Teeth

One of the most common challenges when band-sawing is stripping the teeth from the blade. While every case is unique to the machine, here is a list of the most commonly found causes of teeth stripping:

1. Too many or too few teeth in the cut.
2. Parts are not being held securely – use a third clamp or weld ends
3. Feed rate inaccurate, either the speed is too high or too low
4. Poor butt weld
5. If the chip brush not working it will cause chips to overload gullets
6. Ensure you check the coolant concentration

Band Breakage

Let’s face it, we ask and expect a lot from our bandsaw blades and then we wonder why they seem to break or become damaged prematurely. There are a variety of reasons why blades can break or fracture. Here are some of the common reasons for the premature failure of breakage that may be occurring to your blades.

• • Guides are worn out
  • Guide arms are set too far apart
  • The diameter of the wheels are too small and you should be using smaller bands
  • The band tension of the machine is too high
  • The bandsaw feed rate too high
  • Poor butt weld

Crooked Cut

Did you know that bandsaws will naturally drift either left or right? This drift doesn’t actually have to do with the quality of a bandsaw but it’s also not necessarily the quality of the blade, you’re using either: if you swap the bandsaw blade with a new quality blade, the only thing that changes is the angle at which the blade drifts. Instead, it may be one of the factors below that is causing your cut to turn out more crooked than you would prefer.

• • Your bandsaw blade is too dull
  • You performed an improper break-in
  • The guide arms on the bandsaw are too far apart or out of alignment
  • The bandsaw may have damaged roller or carbide guides
  • The feed rate on the machine is too heavy or the blade speed is too slow
  • The tooth pitch on the blade is too fine
  • The band tension too low