Ernie Leimkuhler wrote:

In article ,
Don Foreman wrote:

I need a way to cleanly shear 18-gage (.047") stainless sheet at a job
site. The width of the material will be about 4". Cuts will be
straight (not curved) but must be clean, square, straight edges.
Cosmetics is important so heat is out -- plasma, abrasive, etc. It
needs to be on-site for cut & fit so laser and waterjet are out. The
cut drop can be distorted, but the workpiece must remain flat and
undistorted.

I'm wondering if a Jet slitting shear would do this job well. Anybody
have any experience with these?
http://industrial.jettools.com/Produ...Cat&cat=333032

I have a Beverly B2. It shears the material easily but getting
dead-straight edges is a bit of a trick on a B2.

Other suggestions?

I have done a lot of stainless sheet installs in kitchens and
restaurants.
My favorite tool is a 0.045" cutoff wheel in a 4-1/2" right angle
grinder.
It cuts really fast, is pretty easy to run a straight line and doesn't
cause much of a heat affected zone.
You don't get any distortion, which you can't say about shears or plasma
cutters.
Metabo and Makita both make good thin cutting wheels.

You will get a bit of a burr on the bottom edge, but that can be quickly
removed using the edge of the wheel.

That would seem to fit with my idea of using a tile cutting saw, like a
bridge type, with a suitable abrasive wheel for metal. The water cooling
should eliminate the HAZ entirely, and the convenient bridge design
should make it very fast to use for straight cuts.



The more sheet metal I did, the less I used a plasma cutter.
The plasma cutter causes too much distortion and really nasty burrs on
the back side, on stainless steel.
On steel a plasma is great.

For zero distortion of sheet you can use a nibbler, but they are very
expensive if they can handle 18 ga stainless, plus it will really chew
up the cutters.