Why LongLife Saw Blades?

LongLife Saw Blades have been scientifically tested, and woodworker approved.  Forintek Scientific study tested them against several other Carbide Blades and reported that they lasted over twice as long before needing to be sharpened or re-tipped.  Customers reported that they got three, five, and even ten times more use between sharpening than their old saw blades. 

 How LongLife Saw Blades are Made:

Design & Material
 An excellent saw blade starts with the steel saw plate. The world’s finest blades use steel made from ultra pure materials and use proprietary heat treat technology. The saw plate is designed using finite element analysis to sculpt and tension the saw plate so that the energy is directed into the cut Proper plate design gives longer blade life and straighter cuts. Waste energy comes out as noise and heat so a good saw blade runs quieter and cooler.

 Laser Cutting
 The steel saw plate is precision laser cut. Then each notch is individually ground out to remove the heat affected zone. Each notch is carefully cut so as to leave the surface with proper roughness for a strong, consistent braze.

 Heat Treating
 Every plate is heat treated for hardness to give it strength but hardness alone is not enough. The saw plate and the heat treat cycle must be very carefully controlled to give proper hardness without brittleness. A hard saw plate that is just hard will shatter under very little use.

 Tensioning
 Each saw plate is precision rolled and tensioned, then hand hammered as necessary to make it perfect. Our equipment is so good that very little hand hammering is required. Hand hammering is a very valuable tool but it can severely damage a saw blade if done excessively. The hammering can compress and harden the steel leading to a source of cracking.  Our approach is to design the manufacturing process as much as possible so it is not needed.

 Flattening
 Every saw plate is cut from flat, really flat material. However every process of making a saw blade can distort the saw plate. During heat treating our plate is clamped under tremendous pressure to prevent warping and movement. Even after this the plates are inspected and reflattened if necessary. The steel saw plate is kept flat and reflattened as necessary during the entire manufacturing cycle. The plate must be flat to position the teeth well. It must be very flat to grind the saw blade to tolerances of under 0.001” (under one – one thousandth of an inch).

 Modern Saw Tipping Material
 Cermets are one of the best kept secrets in the cutting tool industry. They provide the user with increased productivity and profitability through higher cutting speeds and extended tool life. Cermets bridge the gap between ceramics and carbides with speeds ranging from (300 -1200 s.f.m.).They also provide excellent chip control with molded or ground chipbreakers.
 
 Brazing
 Traditionally brazing has been just a means to hold the saw tip on the steel saw body. Instead we use a carefully designed brazing process that holds the saw blade on with much greater tensile strength as well as creating a suspension effect.
 The Manganese we add to brazing materials makes  a dramatic difference in saw blades to the point where tip loss and breakage are all but eliminated.

 Grinding
 Each blade is precision ground using a multi axis CNC grinder.
 600 Grit Man made Diamond, High Frangible Wheels
 The wheels are 600 grit with man made diamonds to give proper fracture characteristics. Diamond size alone is not enough; the diamonds must fracture so they precisely remove the exact quantity of material in the proper manner. A diamond that wears wrong will round and create rubbing and excess heat which can destroy a saw tooth.

Coolant
 Our saw blades are ground using strictly clean coolant. Saw grinding produces millions of hard, sharp particles of carbide and diamond. If these are not constantly removed you will get less even grinds and microfracturing.
 

 Tolerances
 Each blade is ground using top quality, state of the art, rock solid grinders. This is extremely important because high speed wheels can move thin saw blades during grinding if the machine is not strong enough. Our quality equipment gives such great grinding precision that each tip is ground within 0.0005" (One half of one thousandth of an inch).

 Inspection
 Each blade is inspected and reinspected at each step of the process. Most people use the cobalt percentage, hardness and Transverse Rupture Strength to measure carbide performance. These are just three of the over fifty different things that we use to determine saw tip quality.  We use the very finest instruments and, more importantly we use real experts who know what they are looking at.

 Satisfied LongLife Saw Blade Users: 

We have been in business since 1981 at the high performance end of the industry so we have seen thousands and thousands of applications.  We like providing thin kerf saws for a Georgia Pacific mill and saving them $50,000 a year.  It is lot of fun having hobbyist send us pictures of the things they build with our tools and we have a special place in our hearts for the one man and other small shops who do a great job in a tough industry.