Circular Saw
One of the equipments more often used and essential to the work in the workshop it is the circular saw. It is a machine composed by a metallic table glides with a tear approximately in the center of this, through where a cut disk with tablets of hardened steel passes over and it makes the cut.
Circular saw. Source: Invicta.
The circular saw is used mainly to cut the wood in the longitudinal sense or in great pieces, as compensated plates or MDF, that request a cut impelled and controlled manually. In that process, the plate becomes split in smaller parts, with a safety margin, for later to adjust them to the final measure. There is also a guide that serves as lateral support to the piece during the cutting process, allowing parallel cuts to the edge. However as the width of the table it is fixed, that guide only allows the cut of pieces of a certain size (approximately 800 mm), so it should be removed case the dimensions cross her.
Usually the used disk has tablets in alternate trapeze shaped, the most common consumes 3 mm of material of the piece, therefore you can't forget to consider that when making the cuts in your piece. Many disks also possess a drawing with some holes and tears to allow its dilation, because during its use the same can become a lot warm (the one of the picture below doesn't possess).
Cutting disk with hardened steel tablets.
The cut disk is fixed on an axis with bearings. In several models, it has height and inclination tuning (the inclination can be in the axis or in the table, depending on the model). The height of the cut disk should be regulated in agreement with the thickness of the piece, the ideal is that it is between 5 and 8 mm above the superior face of the material (thickness), heights above of that value they increase the possibility of accidents.
Additional operations
With that machine it is also possible to do tears and several types of fittings, it is enough to have some imagination to project the sequence of necessary operations. For instance, to do narrow channels in a piece, you can make several cuts side by side, so that they are put upon and make a wider tear than the thickness of the saw disk. Besides, some models come with tears type swallow tail in its table and a pair of perpendicular guides that allow cuts perfectly square.
Safety tips
The operator should use protecting hearing, safety glasses or face protector, and never she should maintain them hand in the line cut of the machine. The cut of very small pieces should be avoided and that request that their hands are close to the cut disk. For big pieces, work in team. Try the piece not to return during the cut, or make it carefully, because the machine can "give a collision" and to cause serious lesions.
An interesting observation is that a lot of machineshas a rotation of 3600rpm (rpm = rotations per minute) and, in that case, careful should be taken when choosing the illumination of the place, because the frequency of the common alternating current is of 60Hz (at least in Brazil). If you do the math you will see that for each complete turn of the disk there is an alternating current pulse, in other words, if you use a lamp frequently of 60Hz you will see the disk as if it was stopped. If there is many machines working at the same time, maybe you don't notice that the machine is on and it can happen an accident.
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