HORIZONTAL BANDSAW BUYING GUIDE

If you are thinking of buying a new horizontal bandsaw, it's important to consider the following features.

The Size of Material
When choosing a machine it's vital you get the sizing right. For example, our manual HD 375LR will cut 375mm and will cut a diameter of 300mm, but it's always best to add a bit on to your calculations as you don't want to have a machine working at its limit. Remember that if the machine mitres, this will cut down the capacity too, so you need to budget for that as well.

Operations
When buying a machine, it's important to decide if you want a manual machine, a hydraulic lift machine, a semi-automatic or an automatic bandsaw. The more expensive machines will lift up automatically after the cut, saving you time and effort if you have a lot of cutting to do.

Mitre Cuts
You can choose machines that mitre left and right, or which mitre both left and right. If you are looking for a cheaper machine and don't need many mitre cuts, you could select a machine that mitres one way, and if necessary, flip the material to mitre the other way. Our fully automatic Alligator bandsaws have the benefit of a semi-automatic mitre bandsaw included for free!

Blade Speeds
Blade speeds are very important in deciding which machine you need. The cheaper machines have two speeds -the slow speed is usually around 35 metres per minute and the fast speed is around 70 metres per minute. This is acceptable for stainless steel and mild steel. However, if you're cutting a wide variety of materials, you can choose a machine with a variator and the machine blade will cut at a numer of different speeds to suit all metals.

Clamping
The more expensive machines, will clamp the work automatically - when you press the start button, they go down, cut the piece, go back up and unclamp. All you need to do is to feed the material through and press start.

Finally, a fully automatic bandsaw will feed the material through and cut it to length, greatly increasing productivity.