I recently picked up a small HF metal cutting bandsaw. Its not great, but
it does what I wanted it to do. Sever pieces of flat aluminum bar stock.
Recently I was making some small molds for a customer and it worked out
great. I cut pieces with the bandsaw, squared them up on the big mill, and
then threw them on the smaller high speed mill. It was quite nice having
all three pieces of equipment working for me at the same time while I was
doing other work on the manual machines in between loading parts. For a few
minutes I felt like a "real" shop owner. LOL.

I know I have not been kind to HF in recent years, and this piece of
equipment has its HF problems, but as long as I don't expect high precision
work out of it it's a useful piece of equipment for me. I'll keep and eye
out for a bigger and better one I can afford now that I have realized how
useful it is. I've used it for freehand carving curves and angles to fit
sheet for enclosures, I've used it for severing steel tube, and of course
its severed a lot of flat aluminum bar stock.

I haven't had it long, so there is not telling how it will hold up, but I am
sure I'll do something stupid and snap the blade at some point. I am
thinking I want to pick up a spare blade for it before that happens. I am
sure I can just shop around for a generic blade the right length, but I was
wondering if there was a "better" blade I could get for it. One that will
tolerate more stupid mistakes, last longer under normal usage, or something
I can't even think of at the moment. The saw is mostly used for severing
aluminum bar with the still quite slow highest pulley speed, but I can see
it having to sever a piece of 1018 or a piece of O-1 from time to time.

This is the cheap little 4x6.

I can easily see my abrasive saw falling into disuse, and my table saw
getting a good wood blade back on it.