Above: The cutting performance as well as heat and wear resistance of Starrett Primalloy’s M-51 high-speed steel is significantly increased through alloying with cobalt and vanadium, according to the company
September, 2025- When it comes to band sawing, steel service centers face an array of challenges. A perpetual problem is the difficulty in finding experienced band saw operators, says Patrick J. O’Brien, central region sales manager for The L.S. Starrett Co., Athol, Massachusetts. “They’re bringing in new operators who have never worked on a band saw before.”
Getting operators up to speed requires training to learn a host of skills such as properly uncoiling a blade, understanding the basics of speeds and feeds, and breaking in a new blade. O’Brien says Starrett offers a complete training regimen. With a learning curve in any new role, “New, inexperienced operators naturally tend to break a lot of blades at the beginning, and that’s coming at the cost of bimetal and carbide-tipped saw blades. I find they mainly gravitate towards the bread-and-butter bimetal blades.”
Each saw blade manufacturer has its own process for honing blade edges to help extend tool life, he says, but that is never a substitute for skipping the blade break-in process. Starrett’s procedure is to run the recommended surface feet per minute for a specific workpiece material but lower the feed pressure by 50 percent for about 50 to 100 square inches. “We’re creating a radius as we reduce this feed rate.”
O’Brien uses the analogy of gently honing the tip of a freshly sharpened pencil rather than jamming the tip into a sheet of paper and likely breaking it. “We always practice and preach to break in a blade.”
‘BETTER THAN A MASTER OF ONE’
Controlling costs by managing tool inventory remains a priority for service centers, and they often seek a “jack of all blades” in terms of production and price, O’Brien says. The primary materials being cut include a wide range of carbon and stainless steel grades, nickel alloys and more.
Starrett reports that its Primalloy bimetal band saw blades provide a cost-effective, highly productive sawing solution.
“Companies don’t necessarily want to pay a premium for carbide tipped blades all the time, and switching between carbide and bimetal typically causes a pause in production time,” he notes.
To find a happy medium, Starrett’s Primalloy line uses a cobalt and vanadium alloy for heavyduty cutting. This bimetal blade features a special M51 high-speed steel (HSS) edge, positive rake angle and ground teeth. The benefits include long blade life, enhanced wear and heat resistance, and easy penetration in hardened and difficult-to-machine materials.
“With Primalloy, you’re gravitating more towards the nature of a carbide-tipped blade but for the bimetal price. But there’s truly no one blade that fits all applications, especially in a metal service center because, material aside, you’re also operating with different part diameters,” according to O’Brien.
To provide a strong, long-lasting blade, Starrett engineers joined two strips of HSS wires to the backing steel using solid-state diffusion bonding. Called bi-metal unique, this is on all ½ in. and smaller bimetal blades.
With 170 percent greater weld contact area, fractures and breakage at the HSS/backing material interface are significantly reduced. After initial use, the teeth develop a groove, altering the blade area engaged in the cut to create multiple-edge performance. As a result, two chips are generated, which are easy to remove from cuts, and more coolant flows to the cutting zone.
“This bi-metal unique process diffusion bonds two strips of HSS to either side of the carbon steel backing and, because it is softer than the HSS, the edges wear out faster and create two more cutting edges,” O’Brien explains, adding that a larger weld contact area creates four cutting edges and two more teeth. “Ultimately, it’s better performance because you have more teeth created during the cut.”
Starrett Advanz TS carbide-tipped band saw blades offer an ideal multipurpose cutting solution for a broad range of tough steels, ranging from carbon and tool steel to stainless steel and nickel-base alloys.
SHOP NOISE
For applications that involve cutting through air and metal, such as sawing structural materials, tubes, pipes and bundles of small solids, O’Brien says Starrett developed Tennax-Pro band saw blades with a unique tooth geometry to minimize vibration and noise while increasing resistance to wear and tooth breakage.
Some customers have reported that for structural cutting applications, they are receiving OSHA violations “because of how loud the process can be. We decreased the harmonics of the Tennax-Pro blade up to 50 percent.”
He adds, “We didn’t want to stop there. In the results that we’ve seen, we’re getting about 25 percent more blade life and that comes from the redesign of the tooth geometry and exclusive tooth setting process.”
Starrett also extends carbide-tipped blade life with its AMP “back grind” technology for cutting difficult materials by adding a custom enhancement to the back edge of the blade, according to O’Brien. The back grind reduces the chip load as the blade gradually rocks in and out of the cut.
“The rocking results in an increase in tooth penetration without added feed pressure. It also works to minimize surface contact area, increasing the blade life on hard-to-cut alloys.”
EXOTIC ALLOYS
Although a bimetal blade is a service center’s go-to choice when handling many steels, a facility cutting “hard-to-pronounce metals” like Waspaloy, Hastelloy, Greek Ascoloy, Inconel, Nitronic needs a blade with greater heat resistance to last longer and achieve a lower cost per cut, O’Brien notes. “If you’re cutting that stuff all day, you need to be using a carbide-tipped blade.”
Starrett Tennax-Pro bi-metal band saw blades deliver outstanding cutting performance on pipes, tubes and structural profiles.
He adds that Starrett’s Advanz carbide- tipped blades feature a trapezoidal form pattern to add more teeth, reducing the chip load, creating more chips and lightening the burden on each tooth to extend life.
Of course, the band saw blade is only one element to consider when overcoming sawing challenges, and a steel service center needs a band saw machine that’s up to the task.
“Sometimes the machines have either broken down or they’re just using the wrong machine,” O’Brien says, noting an instance when a customer was trying to cut Inconel on a gravity-fed scissor saw.
Nonetheless, some companies may be hesitant to make a capital equipment investment. “We like to educate and encourage them to do what’s best for productivity,” he says.
To help determine if a band saw is suitable for the demands of the material being cut, O’Brien says Starreff offers a saw specialist service report with an inspection checklist for 16 areas. Examples include hydraulic and transmission oil levels, condition of the band guides, sufficient cutting fluid to reduce overheating, whether guide arms are in the proper position and secured, and whether the blade tension, tracking and proper rotation is correct.
“It’s not so much our blades alone,” he says about helping steel service centers overcome their challenges. “It’s our ecosystem of support around the blades as well.”
The L.S. Starrett Co., 978/249-3551, http://starrett.com.
