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From: Ned Wood
Categories:
Date: 03 Oct 2002
Time: 18:24:23
Remote Name: 204.245.233.106
We switched from carbide to Stellite almost six years ago. We cut only hemlock in our 12" double arbor gang. Our Stellite tipped saws run anywhere from ten to twenty hours depending on their position in the machine. Our latest printout from the L-Size program showed an average size of 1.663" (our target is 1.664) with a standard deviation of .007" on 20' 2X12. These measurements were taken eight and one half hours into the shift. We ran a test on some douglas fir earlier in the year with the same results. Our production goal is 500,000/shift so you can see that these saws are getting a work out. Your coolant water and grinders will not turn black from grinding Stellite as they do with carbide. We have found that carbide holds up better in very dry wood so we tip our planer trim saws with carbide but we tip our sawmill trim saws with Stellite. We use a Hana automatic brazer to tip the saws then run them through a H.S. International propane annealer. Our tip loss is almost zero (maybe 5 tips/week) and our shoulder breakage is less than that. I hope this will help you some. I know we will never go back to carbide. ned@seasurf.net