Thanks to some great suggestions on a previous thread, I am using a
mitre saw to cut small (3 inch x 3/8 inch) aluminum bar, with
encouraging results. My follow up pertains to surface quality - in
general, mine is so far very poor.

The saw is spewing out what appear to be nice chips and the carbide
blade is brand new. The saw is fixed at about 5500 RPM, it is a 210mm
blade with 24 teeth. The surface finish looks as if it is splattered
with little globlets of aluminum. On some cuts, it almost looks like
there is a beautiful clean cut underneath, leading me to believe that
the cut is locally producing a good bit of heat which is welding some
of the cut material back onto the surface. Interestingly, the slower
I try to feed, the worse the problem seems to be.

Preliminary research indicates that RPMs, feed rate and lubrication
are all factors in surface quality. With this saw, anyway, I cannot
change the RPMs. Feed rate suggest faster is better. Lube helps a
bit, as is evidence by the times I take a very small amount off the
end (a couple hundreths) and am able to smear lube on the work as
opposed to when I cut off a piece in the middle, in which cases I have
to pre-load each tooth with a bit of grease, or plunge in dry. I am
guessing that the 5500 RPM is the culprit, and that it may end up that
this saw is not an appropriate tool for what I want to do.

Any advice, intuitions or experience that anyone cares to share?
Thanks in advance.