On 26/08/2019 20:23, Bob La Londe wrote:
On 8/24/2019 12:24 PM, Bob La Londe wrote:
On 8/23/2019 1:21 PM, Bob La Londe wrote:
On 8/14/2019 3:09 PM, Bob La Londe wrote:
I got suckered in by some SPAM from Grizzly and ordered a G0621X
variable speed vertical wood/metal bandsaw.Â* Of course it seems to
only come with a wood blade, and I will probably only ever use it
for metal cutting.Â* (I already have a decent Rigid mid/small
woodcutting upright bandsaw.)

I think I know why they had them on sale.Â* The title of the listing
says its 3 phase.Â* You have to read down into the description to
see they sell it with a VFD control for speed control and its wires
to plug into a single phase outlet.Â* I think most small shop and
home shop people saw "3 phase" and just skipped onto the next listing.

I'm getting ready to order a metal cutting blade for it.Â* I like
the way the M42 blades hold up on my 7x10 bandsaw so I figured I'd
just get those for the upright.Â* The saw spec says blade width from
1/8 to 1 inch, but I doubt I'll be doing any scroll cutting with
it.Â* I'm kinda looking for the most useful pitch and width so to
speak.Â* Is there a big difference between a 3/4 inch wide blade and
a 1 inch wide blade.Â* I suspect I'll be doing 99.9% straight
cutting stuff that isn't practical to fit in the horizontal.Â* Cost
difference is only about $10-15 dollars depending on the source,
but still $10 is a premium six pack of beer or a couple shots of
top grade Canadian rye for after work.

Then there is pitch.Â* The blade on my 7x10 horizontal seems to do
just fine for most things.Â* I use it on aluminum most of the time,
but it will severe 1-5/8 4140QT round without much thought, and of
course it severs easy machining stress proof almost as fast as it
chops aluminum. Looks like about 12 pitch.Â* I can't recall, but it
might be variable pitch 12/14 or something like that.Â* I don't want
to have a bunch of different blades hanging on the wall.Â* Just one
spare that will allow me to keep going if I break one while I order
another spare.Â* It will get used most of the time to cut 6061 or
7075 aluminum from 1/2" thick to 2 inch thick. It will occasionally
need to cut some 4140HT or some A36 from 1/4 inch to 1-1/2 inch.Â*
Rarely I may need to cut some pieces of aluminum sheet in either
5052 or 3003.Â* Now I usually cut those with a circular saw on the
wood deck of my equipment trailer.

I'm leaning towards a 12-14TPI or 10-12TPI 3/4 inch blade since
that's what I am running on the horizontal, but I'm open to
changing my mind.


Well it finally arrived a day late while the blades arrived several
days early.

First impressions are good. All the sheet metal is heavier than I
expected and much heavier than my wood only vertical saw. The saw
itself is a lot heavier. I will not be dead lifting it onto the
stand. One thing in the version of the manual I found online that
concerned me is that it appeared to have friction block type blade
guides. My wood cutting bandsaw has friction block and they work
fine. Particularly since I changed them out for "Cool Blocks" (tm),
but both of my horizontal metal cutting saws have bearing roller
guides. One of the first things I noticed when I pried the saw out
of the Styrofoam packing (more on that in a minute) is that top and
bottom had decent size bearing roller blade guides. Making sure it
wasn't a very recent upgrade I opened the manual that actually came
with the saw and it shows the bearing roller guides. It could be
another reason the saw was on sale. Another item that represented
the saw as less than it actually was.

About that Styrofoam packing. Its a very thick excellent sandwich
foam custom molded for the saw. Did I say thick. The box itself
looked like it had been burst partly open and retaped in transit.
The box was damaged on two sides and the whole box was "bent" a foot
from the end and the end dipped more than an inch hanging off the
pallet. I have fully unpacked and unwrapped the saw, and the stand.
I went out of my way looking for any signs of damaged from bent
sheet metal to a door that might not open or close perfectly. There
are still parts (table, fence, trunnion, wheel, etc) embedded in the
packing foam, but I could find zero hints of damage despite the
obvious abuse the packaging received in transit.

I have a lot of work to do so the saw might just sit where it is for
a couple days, but I'll let you know how it does ripping aluminum
and steel soon enough.

The motor is a little lighter than I would have liked at 1.25 HP
according to the data plate, but it is a 4 pole motor so it should
still have decent torque at modest RPM.

I started to setup the saw today, and ran into my first problem
pretty quickly. The bolt holes in the stand do not line up with the
bolt holes in the saw. They aren't off by a little either. They are
off by a lot. A call to Customer Service at Grizzly was not
particularly helpful.

"Oh, tech support has to talk with you and will ask you to make
measurements. I can start a ticket, but then you will have to wait on
them to get back to you, or you can call back on Monday and we can
transfer you directly over to them. "

What I heard was, "Customer service is only here on the weekend to
make people 'think' you might get some service. Not to actually do
anything." LOL.

What somebody else, might say is, "Oh that's awesome. Its totally not
right out of the box, but they are fantastic because they will make
it right eventually." LOL.



Well I found the problem.Â* The logo panel on the stand is on upside
down.Â* LOL,Â* Seriously. I just set the stand down with the logo upside
right, and the stand is upside down.Â* It never even occurred to me
they'd ship it with their logo mounted upside down.Â* I feel silly.

Must have been the model destined for Australia and New Zealand.