My little one man shop has been sllllllowly growing over the past 5 years or so....no intentions of making it full time, at least not until my daughter and her future sibling are in school, but I've been able to upgrade things a piece at a time, and this year has been off to a busy start with more work coming, so I am looking to upgrade my saw. Now don't laugh, but I've been using a grizzly portaband for all my stock cutting. STOP LAUGHING!!
I've made fixtures for it to be used as a vertical and a horizontal, so it really is a universal bandsaw, but it still sucks. Most of my work is with steel tube, mostly 2" and under, although I do a fair bit of aluminum work as well. 98% of what I cut is 3" and under round and square tube, angles, and round and flat bar. So I've been lusting after a cold saw. I know that there is a big difference in ferrous and non ferrous cold saws with the cutting speed, but I've heard that you can do occasional non ferrous cutting on a ferrous saw. Production speed is a low priority, as I'm rarely doing large numbers of repeat cuts, but accuracy in terms of length and squareness is a big priority, and I've heard this is where cold saws shine. The 3 phase requirement is a big turnoff, as a RPC would be necessary for my little shop, and I expect to need at least 4 blades for thin wall, thick wall, solids, and non ferrous. I've been looking at
this bandsaw as it does what I need, but it's still a bandsaw. I've been looking at the
Hyd-Mech P250, and I would punch my grandmother in the face to get one of
these, but I'm not sure.
To sum it up....Can you do aluminum cutting on a ferrous cold saw?
Is the accuracy you get from the cut worth the expense?
In 1/8" x 2" square tube (A500) how fast will it cut?