Thread: A blade to cut double side melamine and laminated chipboard

Very quick cuts and laminate material does not go together, the more teeth the better cut you will get, plus you would want something like a triple chip tooth design trade off it will be slower, there are blades that claim to make chip free cuts in Melamine/laminate coated board. I personally have never found one that does, best method is a table saw equipped with a scribing saw. Others may have more success than myself

I have used a triple chip negative rake aluminium cutting blade for cutting laminate boards and it worked pretty well. Not as good as commercial cuts but OK for hobby work. I guess it depends a bit on how much board you are wanting to cut and if it is for a one off project or something longer term. I actually used a 7 1/4" blade on my 10" saw quite successfully as the bore matched and I had enough depth of cut.

As mentioned above, a table saw fitted eith a scribe saw is best, and used in commercial shops with a proper blade, Leuca blades are the ones used where I did my apprenticeship. Also using a zero clearance insert should minimise tear out.

Another option is paying your local cabinetmaker to cut the material for you.

The 80 tooth blade will cut fine, i've cut melamine on a 60T blade and its flawless (new blade).

If you're really concerned, you can replicate the scribe cut but doing two passes, the first cut being the scribe cut, the second cut with blade raised to the required depth to complete the cut.

Originally Posted by Caligula

Could you please recommend a blade for 10" Metabo table saw for cutting double side melamine and laminated chipboard. I need 10" blade and the choice of the shops in Melbourne is very limited . They sell good quality Diablo blades at Bunnings and Total tools. Their blades have 72, 80 or 90 teeth but I am a bit confused which one is the most suitable for my particular task. Or maybe they are not good at all for this job.

72'' teeth blade is designed for decking.
80" teeth blade is recommended to not-ferrous and plastic but they mentioned laminated materials as well. Will it smoothly cut melamine and chipboard as well ?
90" teeth blade is for delicate mouldings, ply, melamine and MDF. But I feel it would be too slow to make 100-200 very quick cuts in laminated materials. What do you think ?

What do I think?
None of the blades you have listed will work, or they might all work -- you really can't tell just by the number of teeth on the blade.
You need to know the grind of the teeth on each the blade. from memory there are at least five different grinds for the teeth,
and something like 10 rakes for each tooth -- from minus 10 degrees to positive 15 degrees.

and a blade can be custom ground to optimise its performance to a particular task.


and what do you mean by "very quick cuts in laminated materials"?
on the face of it "very quick cut" and "laminated material" implies a cut with lots of chip out.


Somewhere I have a Freud saw blade catalog that lists something like 50 different 10" (254 mm) saw blades all with 5/8" arbors and all optimised for different tasks.

The trick for minimising chips without a scriber is to cut slowly and have the blade low, about 10-15mm above the material thickness. If you cut too fast, it WILL chip no matter what blade you use.

I always had access to a panel saw with a scriber, but I did some tests without it and both triple chip and normal ATB blades performed similarly well without the scriber when sharp.

Triple chip blades can be more expensive, both to buy and to sharpen, and are not good for solid timber, so keep that in mind too.

Thanks everyone for your support.

Unfortunately here in Australia we have a very limited choice and I do not have a chance to choose the right blade from a thick catalog. I need 10" blades and I have to choose them eighter from Bunnings, Total Tools, Just Tools or Sydney Tools. The first three shops sell exactly the same blades.

Yesterday I tried to talk to a salesperson from Bunnings . But very quickly I realised that he knew everything a bit less than my wife. One day he probably works at the gardening section and next day he sells drills and table saws. I"ve made a decision without him and bought this blade:

Diablo 254mm 10" 90 Teeth Ultimate Flawless Finish Circular Saw Blade

This morning I quickly tested it and made 3 or 4 cuts. It works quite good.

After hours I travelled to Sydney Tools and had a chat with a guy. The person spent a lot of time with me and I felt that he had an enormous experience. Unfortunately they also didn't have a lot of 10" blades. They only sell blades of a limited number of suppliers. So he couldn't tell me anything about Diablo (Freud) as they do not sell them.
I explained him about my requirements and materials I had to cut. He said that I had to find a blade with a very thin kerf. Most of the blade in their stock and at the other shops have around 2.4mm kerf. Makita had 2.15mm but there wasn't the required size.
And suddenly we found this blade :

Sydney Tools

It has just 2.00mm kerf and I decided to try it as well.

Nearly each weekend I need to precut about 150-200 pieces of 1500mm X 100mm X 20 mm melamine for the school. Normally i need up to an hour for this job. And my target is to decrease to quantity of white particles from under the blade which the dust extractor doesn't suck. The person from Sydney Tools said that the thinner kerf the less particles will be floating in the air. I will test both blades this weekend and let you know if you are interested.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by Caligula

Nearly each weekend I need to precut about 150-200 pieces of 1500mm X 100mm X 20 mm melamine for the school.

Sounds like a good candidate for contracting out to someone with a CNC beam saw; stack it 5 sheets high and punch them out by the thousand.

I know the furniture training centre at Holmsglen Chadstone used to do contract machining, but it's been 10 years since I went through there.

Thin kerf blades have their place, and for school work is probably fine. I've stopped using thin kerf blades because i found the blade can flex slightly causing less than ideal edges.

If you want a quality blade head to a saw doctor or saw sharpening specialist in your area. They often have access to a better range of blades specialised for your intended purpose.

What the Sydney tools guy said is only true from the point of view being less material is being removed, so there's "less", but from a dust extraction point of view, if your dust extractor is doing its job the amount of material removed using a 2mm kerf vs a 3.2mm kerf would be negligible.

For melamine someone told me to put painters tape over the cut line to minimise blow out.

I used a 60 tooth blade on my dewalt table saw doing it this way and I was happy with the results.

Regards,

Adam

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk

What does a school do with so many melamine strips ?

Originally Posted by Sam

What does a school do with so many melamine strips ?

It is my business for the last 20 year and I work with many schools. Most of the new established businesses collapse within the first 6 months. I managed to survive, but probably I can't advertise my website here.
I need to cut different materials to many different sizes depends on the topic. They make Billy Carts, birdhouses, cars, etc.etc.

I understand, thought you worked at one school !

Originally Posted by Caligula

I"ve made a decision without him and bought this blade:

Diablo 254mm 10" 90 Teeth Ultimate Flawless Finish Circular Saw Blade

This morning I quickly tested it and made 3 or 4 cuts. It works quite good.

so you purchased a D1090XZ 10" blade -- with a 30 degree Alternate Top Bevel grind. Can't see any mention of the hook angle.
Provided you keep the blade sharp it should do the job you require.


it should cut better than the blade designed for use with a battery powered circular saw

After hours I travelled to Sydney Tools and had a chat with a guy.
I explained him about my requirements and materials I had to cut. He said that I had to find a blade with a very thin kerf. Most of the blade in their stock and at the other shops have around 2.4mm kerf. Makita had 2.15mm but there wasn't the required size.
And suddenly we found this blade :

Sydney Tools

It has just 2.00mm kerf and I decided to try it as well.