ShaudFAB

Hello all,
I am have been going through so many hole saws. Can anyone recommend me to some good quality hole saws for sch 40 stainless steel?

lostforawhile

are you making the same parts over and over? have you considered having the holes laser cut? you are definitely going to need at the minimum a hole saw with cobalt teeth or carbide . Are you using cutting fluid? you can't cut stainless dry, and you need the slowest possible speed you can get. The stuff is going to be hard on holesaws no matter what you do, but the idea is to get as much life out of them as you can.

that-guy

if he's doing something repetitive, he's best off to have them cut on a mill using a jig

HellaFab

annular cutter with flood coolant.

that-guy

basically what I was getting at

weiRtech

a plasma cutter will save you tooling costs.

HellaFab

You would plasma stainless? With compressed air?

kingofbattle909

iTrader: (6)

Milwaukee hole saw set ftw.

lostforawhile

we've had the best luck just having them laser cut, you end up with a very small burr that needs to be cleaned up, but it's easy, we have tried hole saws, cutters in the mill etc,

lostforawhile

depends on the type of stainless, they are all really tough on any kind of tooling though

weiRtech

yes, all the time. for odd shaped holes it is very time effective. as long as you put a smaller diameter half pipe inside to catch the slag and do a bit of clean up after with a die grinder, it turns out fine.

Caoboy

MMMMmmm work hardening...

ShaudFAB

Thanks for all the input. I picked up some bosch bimetal hole saws and they are working great so far on stainless sch 10 304l.

CODE4

Clean shop air will work fine, but argon will make for an even cleaner cut. Grab a high pressure flow meter (~80 psi I believe) and modern plasma cutters will not fault from low input pressure. Little to no sugar to clean up.

Of course some will argue that it is a waste of argon blah blah but how much is your time worth? In a production environment it costs less.