SMS wrote:
dpb wrote:

What Al alloy?

Aluminum 6061-T6 Extruded Rectangle 0.1875" x 1.25"

That's a fairly hard alloy; iirc about Brinnel 75-80? If so, that's
almost 3/4's of a moderately soft ductile cast iron which would be about
100. It's gonna' need some time to cut it cleanly (see comment
following...)

Sounds to me more like trying to cut too fast.

I'm not sure. The chop saws for metal using 14" cutting wheels all run
at a much faster effective speed than I'm running. The smaller chop saw
I saw ran at a much higher rpm to compensate for the smaller blade.

I mean trying to push the saw thru the material faster than the blade
can handle, not the blade speed...

What kind of a cut are you trying to make?

Just a straight cut.

I think one mistake I may be making is to not move the aluminum further
back so I can come down directly in the center of the piece. The blade
hits first on the outer edge of the piece then the blade comes down
through the piece into the slot below.

Don't wanna' do that -- if a tooth catches w/o a hard stop behind it,
you're really asking for trouble. If not against the solid fence, at
least be sure to use something solid behind that can't collapse.

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