Hi all this is the makehaven video for the cutoff saw
taller version of the saga will probably have in the future this is called an abrasive cutoff saw
specifically so similar to an angle grinder it has an abrasive cutoff wheel so it's not it doesn't
have teeth that it's using to cut through this material it's it's just an abrasive material that
grinds through it and it's been so yeah it is it's cutting as opposed to necessarily grinding and
shaping it's pretty small it's effectively like a small angle grinder just mounted on the bench and
but because it's small can be pretty mobile so if you have a longer piece you're welcome to unclamp
it and move it to a bigger table where you'll have more working room and and it is similar to an
angle grinder fairly dangerous so the biggest risk with it is this disc exploding it's spinning very
fast 9,000 rpm so really fast and if it explodes it's gonna shoot out burns and so that's why were
wearing the safety vest and a face shield and so this is obviously protecting or my organs and then
this is protecting your face and it's in addition to these glasses so right now for example I was
lifted the shield up and but I still want to have my glasses on in case there's someone else working
and the wire wheel is going and a piece of metal comes off of it so that's why you have glasses and
the face shield this machine does have a little guard to help to protect you from the from the
wheel and it raises up as you go down however that is not a substitute for the face shield so
that that explains these two pieces in terms of things that you can cut on it this tool is just
for ferrous materials that means things that have iron pretty much means steel so stainless
steel mild steel hard steel steel steel if you try to cut something like aluminum the aluminum
will just melt and get into the abrasive wheel and readily destroy it same thing with a bench
grinder wheel just for steel so I picked up three pieces of metal this galvanized steel which is not
great but if you're just doing a quick cut line on the end of the world piece of flat stock use some
square stock and some round stock and technically squared - so this is a pretty simple tool it has
a clamp in the front to hold the material want to make sure that the material is well clamped
so it is not going anywhere and you just spin this outwards to open it up you can adjust the
angle so you just get two allen keys and get them here and here and then adjust the angle
if you want to make sure your piece is really square I would recommend getting a square and
putting it in here against the blade to make sure that the piece is in fact totally down when you're
making adjustments like that and your fingers are underneath the tool you want to make sure
to unplug the tool from the wall what we're gonna do is I'm just gonna spin this back enough so that
we can take this piece of square stock and just get a vague sense for how square our blade is
okay so we're gonna bring it down and it looks like it's sitting pretty flat against the plate
so I think this is relatively square that's not the best way of doing it you would take
an actual Engineering's metal square and square it up this plate is also pretty small so it's
not cutting over that big of an area now at that point the things that we're cutting on this are
steel and then in terms of shapes and sizes it needs to be pretty small so this is too big for
a bunch of reasons one I'm not even sure the blade go all the way through it so immediately
disqualified but even if it could you don't want to be cutting something that deep on the blade
believe it because once you're that deep on the blade any twists near torqueing is applying a
whole lot of movement to that blade and it's biting out all sides of it you really want to
be using the edge of the blade to be doing the cutting and once you're that deep then
the sides are getting are hitting the metal so that's not a great situation so this size tool
is gonna be better for flat stock round stock if it's well secured something angled it's okay
again if it's well secured but you don't want it going too high you if so for something like
this you would use a band saw and that that would be the right people bandsaw getting a
bandsaw set up for something quick where you could just be a chopped would be come might
might be more time intensive than using this as well so that's the calculation you might
use again if it was aluminum you would not use this something like aluminum you would cut on
the bandsaw a hacksaw not with an abrasive wheel so when you're going to use the tool
you just want to give it a quick look I'm gonna unplug it just so we can look at the heat at the
at the wheel itself so I'm just looking to see if there any big chunks missing from it it gets
cracked obviously that would be an immediate disqualifier it looks pretty fine to me and
so I think I think we're good to go if it was getting too worn down so this this is an abrasive
wheel that just progressively gets smaller and smaller as it's worn down you could replace it
so now we're going to look at the materials we have here we already covered these cross
steeples this is a piece of galvanized steel which means it has a zinc coating if you were
trying to weld it that would be a no no because it would vaporize the zinc and reduce I'll be very
dangerous grinding doesn't get to that temperature however if you were to be cutting a bunch of it
wearing a respirator would probably be a good idea just because you don't know exactly what's
in in the galvanization and you'll necessarily want to be breathing that I would say actually
in general if you're doing any large amount of cutting of any a steel wearing your respirator is
a good idea if you're doing one quick cut you're probably good to go would say for more than two
minutes you should probably put a respirator on to make sure that your lungs are protected then
these other pieces this one we said was too large this one is cylindrical so we need to
make sure that it's really well clamped so now we're going to talk about cutting you want to
make sure that you're standing out of the way you want to make sure that your workpiece is
supported so in this case if it falls half an inch onto the table that's fine if if we were
had in a situation where as much longer and hanging off youd wanna be sure to have these
supports so it didn't fall on the floor you don't think I want to be surprised or scare anyone else
when the piece has been cut it'll be quite hot so you want to make sure that you are handling with
pliers and sometimes it's going to get out of a metal can of water that you can dunk the pieces
and when you're done so that they will often are safe to touch bear in mind that by quenching a new
piece of metal that can change its property as it could effectively hardness so in some cases
you just want to let the metal cool normally so we're just going to cut this piece it's a piece
of square stock and so it'll be it held firmly we'll go over some clamping techniques so this
piece we're just gonna type in fortune business slow and then this piece just articulates to
match the material that you're cutting and in this case we'll see if it gets a good firm clamp
and it seems to be pretty good sometimes it'll be wobbly or not good you know and and part of
that might be that it's bending over and so what what you can do is take another piece so forget
another piece of this metal then we could put it up by the top and that'll make sure that this
stays parallel and doesn't Bend up or down for a piece of cylindrical stock you might want to
do the same thing depending on how well it plans you could also use your left hand to hold on to
it to make sure that it is well secured but you want to make sure that the clamp is doing 99% you
certainly don't want to rely on your hands prevent this from spinning there's any risk of this coming
loose and spinning then you should find another way of cutting this so we're just gonna down on
this we would if you're making a precision cut and I'll cut off this this end because this
looks less useful then you want to have a mark and remember that this abrasive wheel is going
to remove material it has a kerf a thickness of cut so if we wanted to keep this piece we would
cut on the right side of our line it's kind of hard to see but it's coming down here and and
cutting the material so I'm just gonna clamp down on this it's firmly on there this saw is clamped
down to the table and now I'm gonna move to this side so last side again I'm standing out of the
way so if there's were to break it's not gonna go to me I'm still wearing this the face shield down
and it looks like it didn't actually cut all the way through so this must have hit something when
it came down yeah so this is hitting the rest so I think what's happened is this blade has
been used so much that it is shrunk in diameter to the point where it isn't cutting all the way
through so that means that it's time for this blade to be replaced and that's something that
staff will do however that doesn't really change the principle of it this piece of metal is still
very hot it would have fallen through two other points are one hearing protection is a good
idea especially you're doing more than just one quick cut this can be very loud so you can wear
hearing protection and the mask that's that's not a concern another is that if at any point
you aren't seeing sparks that means that you're cutting a non ferrous material so if you aren't
seeing sparks that's a good indicator to stop what you're doing and check to make sure that
you're cutting a steel or iron because again if you're not and that's that's a big no no so
when you're done you're just gonna loosen this you can see there's actually some discoloration
from the heat which is probably still quite hot so I'm just gonna let that cool we could also
just grab some pliers to to pick the material up with because it is probably pretty hot stuff
if we wanted we could have them again that we dunk it into or we could just leave it on there
ensure that no one else is like me to come over and touch it it's a big chunk of metal
so it's likely to stay hot for a little bit and then you're good to go so we'll make sure
to replace this blade so it's big enough to cut pieces and hopefully and not just a future we'll
have an even bigger version of this so that you can make bigger cuts thanks for watching