Cut Off Saw & Gear Cutting Arbors

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SirJohn

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I am in the market to buy an arbor for a cut off saw and future gear cutting blade for my mill. It appears that as usual there many options I.e. straight arbors that are held in a chuck or collet and R8 tapered arbors and specific hole size arbors and universal ones that will hold blades with various size holes. Plus some that have keys.
Looking for suggestions before I spend a bunch of $$ on an arbor and blades.
Thanks for the help.
 
My experience has been that it near impossible to buy affordable quality arbors that run true.
Straight shank arbors are quite easy to make, and for most hobby applications you can ignore the keyway. Then you can grab them in any collet or even an end mill holder.
I've made straight shank arbors for slitting saws, involute gear cutters, grinding wheels, etc.

There are a few key thing I learned making them:
First is to bore a hole in the arbor the same diameter as the blade that will be held, and make the "retaining cap" a plug that fits very closely in the bore.
Under cut the holding face of the cap, and possibly even the arbor so that it clamps only on the outside diameter of the arbor face. This is important for a few reasons - without it you can break a slitting saw (DAMHIK), and it helps with transfer of torque to the cutter by moving the clamping forces out as far as possible.
True up the body OD in the same operation as making the bore to have as concentric an arbor as possible.

Once I learned to do those things my arbors have been great to me. Some have been made where I threaded the plug itself and gave it pin drive holes (and made my own wrench), and others are just simple through holes to allow a standard cap screw. Depends if you need the clearance on the bottom, and how rushed you are to get the job done!
Attached are a few pics of arbors I've made. I tried to standardize on a 1" diameter shank, but you can use whatever suits you. IMG_5775.JPGIMG_5774.JPGIMG_5776.JPGIMG_5777.JPGIMG_5772.JPGIMG_5771.JPGIMG_5769.JPG
 
Years ago I bought a few lots of used/NOS USA slitting saws and made 1/2" & 5/8" arbors to drive them. As Ninefinger mentioned, the very cheap imported arbors seem next to useless with tons of run out so it's better to make your own.

arbor_1.jpg


Forward ahead to this year and I needed metric stub arbors with keys for driving gear cutters. The design above isn't nearly sturdy enough for that, so I took a chance and went with two imported (China) R8 milling arbors in 16 & 22 mm.

20220904_122935.jpg


I was pleasantly surprised with how good they are. The one has a great TIR of only .0002" while the other one is still good at .0004". The fit and finish on both is great.

Since I now had metric arbors, I decided to also purchase a nice selection of imported metric slitting saws for both. None of these slitting saws are keyed, so you just remove the key from the arbor to use them.

The picture above shows one of the arbors loaded with a involute gear cutter while the other arbor has a slitting saw. When I made the gears, I first "gashed" an opening with the slitting saw and then formed the teeth with the involute cutter the next time around as seen below.

20220904_111414.jpg
 
Other than the fact that I had to disassemble them & clean out the swarf (see Problems with Sierra American Arbors; I still haven't heard back from SA on the issues), these are very good slitting saw arbors from McMaster-Carr (lower delivered cost than Penn Tool):

McM-C Slitting Saw Arbors.png

I'm happy with the (relatively) lower cost 0.001" TIR arbors, particularly since most saws have more than that runout.
 
Other than the fact that I had to disassemble them & clean out the swarf (see Problems with Sierra American Arbors; I still haven't heard back from SA on the issues), these are very good slitting saw arbors from McMaster-Carr (lower delivered cost than Penn Tool):

View attachment 143369
I'm happy with the (relatively) lower cost 0.001" TIR arbors, particularly since most saws have more than that runout.
I don't get why you would buy one of these. If you make hyour own, it is simple to do. Also, if you are worried about tir, when you make a cut, just adjust for the extra tir. The only time I would be worried about that is if I had to make some kind of incredibly necessary accuracy. I would never pay those kinds of prices for those arbors. The price of the less accurate ones are OK, would save a lot of time rather than making them and for most things, that little bit of tir is most likely totally irrelevant.

Recently I made an arbor for slitting slots in screw heads. I was surprized at the low tir and how nice the cuts were. However, I never removed the arbor from the 3 jaw. Will have to wait to see what it's like if removed and then replaced. But again, slots in a screw head hardly matter for accuracy.
 
I don't get why you would buy one of these. If you make hyour own, it is simple to do. Also, if you are worried about tir, when you make a cut, just adjust for the extra tir. The only time I would be worried about that is if I had to make some kind of incredibly necessary accuracy. I would never pay those kinds of prices for those arbors. The price of the less accurate ones are OK, would save a lot of time rather than making them and for most things, that little bit of tir is most likely totally irrelevant.
I purchased the lower cost ones, and since they were part of another order did not pay any additional shipping. The main reason I purchased was for the dampening effect which according to reviews I had read is real. TIR is not a big deal since as you are aware only a few teeth using do the cutting at any time due to the TIR os the blades themselves (as the teeth wear, fresh teeth pick up the cut).

Could I make them? Yes, but as I have a 7x16 Mini-Lathe I try to avoid pushing the envelope of the machine.
 
I purchased the lower cost ones, and since they were part of another order did not pay any additional shipping. The main reason I purchased was for the dampening effect which according to reviews I had read is real. TIR is not a big deal since as you are aware only a few teeth using do the cutting at any time due to the TIR os the blades themselves (as the teeth wear, fresh teeth pick up the cut).

Could I make them? Yes, but as I have a 7x16 Mini-Lathe I try to avoid pushing the envelope of the machine.
I didn't have any R8s at one time and couldn't afford them so I made some. They were not very accurate, but for most things that didn't matter, it was just a method for cutting slots or sides or whatever. When I needed high accuracy, I needed better tooling. But those low cost ones, would be just fine for 99.99 % of what I would ever need. Can't even imagine making something with greater accuracy. Well, how did the damping go? Did it work?
 
I didn't have any R8s at one time and couldn't afford them so I made some. They were not very accurate, but for most things that didn't matter, it was just a method for cutting slots or sides or whatever. When I needed high accuracy, I needed better tooling. But those low cost ones, would be just fine for 99.99 % of what I would ever need. Can't even imagine making something with greater accuracy. Well, how did the damping go? Did it work?
Have only used it on 0.060" x 2" saws in 12L14 so far, but it behaved better than the R-8 multi-diameter arbor I have: less chatter and vibration, even though less of the blade was supported.
 
Have only used it on 0.060" x 2" saws in 12L14 so far, but it behaved better than the R-8 multi-diameter arbor I have: less chatter and vibration, even though less of the blade was supported.
I thimpfk I used one of those multi diameter things and realized at once it was a piece of crap and never used it again.
 

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