Gone is the lowly, old, kept-in-the-dark vertical band sawing machine. From the entry level 10″ automatic saw that can cut plus or minus five-thousandths of an inch in cut length all day long, through the mid-sized machines that look for all the world like CNC milling machines, to the newer designs of the really big-boy vertical saws from 20″ on up to an astounding 36″ by 36″, the sky appears to be the limit on how much better a vertical band saw machine can be made.
Just about the time you say to yourself, “That’s got to be it, what else can there be?” another innovation comes rolling out to restart the evolutionary process all over again. Here is a prime example — vertical saws have had to evolve to keep pace with the ever more capable horizontal band saws. It wasn’t so long ago the thinking was if you must cut a mitered piece you would look to a vertical saw to do that. Those days are over.
The most advanced manufactures began to realize that vibration was the number one detriment to productive long life vertical band sawing, and designed their machines with the utmost rigidity possible. Now, when you talk rigidity in a vertical band saw, you have to consider two distinctly different things. Rigidity in the head as well as rigidity in the base, you can have one without the other, only problem is if you don’t have both your design will devastate your band saw blade life. Yes, manufactures have now begun to develop their machine designs from the ground up in consideration of the band saw blades stresses during cutting, thereby improving both the cut finish on the piece part as well as band saws blade life. Gone are the old box ways or dovetail ways as a means of attaching the cutting head to the machines base. The newer vertical metal cutting band saws are attached together with linear bearings both drastically improving rigidly but also reducing maintenance to almost nil.
Today, over 50% of miter cutting done in the U.S. is done on horizontal band saw machines. In an effort to try to stay relevant, some vertical band saw manufacturers have looked to the fringe of the cutting industry for their niche — and they found it! Long stroke (excessive material feed length) is one of the typical features found on the newest group of verticals to hit the market, and that is usually coupled to a fully-automatic band saw with automatic head tilt included.
In addition to the auto-feed and auto-tilt, the controllers are, in many cases, a CNC type, which can produce batch cutting with ease. You might ask, “What is batch cutting anyway?” The best way to describe this term is to use a window manufacturer’s business as an example. If such a company received an order for custom window sizes to be cut out of metal, each one a different size than the other, the following is how they would batch cut with the appropriate vertical metal cutting band saw. The saw is able to automatically index the first stick, so they would make a miter cut and index the next length and automatically make the second miter cut. And do that for all four sides without operator input. Then go on to the next window size and produce that window without operator input and so on until you have cut the entire order. There aren’t many horizontal band saws around that can do that.
The best vertical metal cutting band saws can be had at the same place you can get the best horizontal metal cutting band saws, of course — and that is at Bud's Machine Tools in Salt Lake City, Utah. Our track record in the business of supplying high quality machine tools to metalworkers (and all the while treating them the way we would want to be treated) has kept us in good stead with our ever-expanding customer base. Although we do a considerable business in the Intermountain West region, our customers are as far flung across the U.S.A. as can be. Bud's Machine Tools is a full-service company with our own service staff, a stocked parts department and accessories to boot.
