I built a big saw for slicing up a forklift, or anything else on earth.

[MossRoad]

Can this thread be moved to Build It Yourself?

Done!

I left a 30-day redirect in the original forum in case anyone looks for it there.

 

[LD1]

Might be faster to melt down the counterweight and re-cast the iron to whatever size you want

 

[strantor]

Done!

I left a 30-day redirect in the original forum in case anyone looks for it there.

Awesome! Thank you!

 

[strantor]

Might be faster to melt down the counterweight and re-cast the iron to whatever size you want

You're not wrong, it's a painfully slow process. I say that cutting with diamond wire is almost always not the way you should go. It's messy, expensive, and takes forever. If there's any other way to cut it, cut it that way. But when there isn't, it's something worth having in your back pocket. It's a last resort. When what you need to cut can't be cut with conventional methods, diamond wire can cut just about anything on earth.

I know your casting suggestion was in jest but I've actually gone down that train of thought in earnest. Even if I wanted to follow it I'd still need a way to get it into manageable sized pieces. Dynamite? Not sure even that would work.

 

[MossRoad]

Kinda neat. Thanks for the video.

A question, though.....

Why doesn't the diamond wire cut through the pulley's on the saw?

(scratches what's left of the hair on my head).

 

[LD1]

You're not wrong, it's a painfully slow process. I say that cutting with diamond wire is almost always not the way you should go. It's messy, expensive, and takes forever. If there's any other way to cut it, cut it that way. But when there isn't, it's something worth having in your back pocket. It's a last resort. When what you need to cut can't be cut with conventional methods, diamond wire can cut just about anything on earth.

I know your casting suggestion was in jest but I've actually gone down that train of thought in earnest. Even if I wanted to follow it I'd still need a way to get it into manageable sized pieces. Dynamite? Not sure even that would work.

Dynamite is old school low speed stuff. Need some modern plastics. Enough of it and I'm sure you can make any size chunk of iron into manageable pieces. Either that or send it into orbit

 

[strantor]

Kinda neat.

Kinda neat!? I thought my unnecessarily graphic intro, misapplied theatrical musical score, and laughably false bravado would have clued everyone in that it's in fact the coolest thing anyone's ever seen. I mean hell, just look at what I named it!

Thanks for the video.

You bet! Thanks for watching!

A question, though.....

Why doesn't the diamond wire cut through the pulley's on the saw?

(scratches what's left of the hair on my head).

It's abrasive cutting so requires relative motion (slippage) to cut. Same reason your tires aren't (immediately) cut through by the abrasive highway, my pulleys aren't (immediately) cut through by the wire. Start doing burnouts though, and that goes out the window. There's no relative motion between the pulley and wire, I made sure of it. I made these pulleys out of UHMW (cut/abrasion resistant plasic - same thing cutting boards are made of) and machined them to a specific profile such that the wire is drawn down deep into the pulley and pinched from two sides for maximum traction.



And I designed the pulleys in such a way that they offer their own dust protection to the bearings so that I could remove the dust shields from the bearings (those dust shields cause a lot of drag). Also flushed the grease out of the bearings and used light oil instead. They spin like a top now, takes a couple minutes for them to stop spinning when the wire breaks.

All that said, I have cut through a couple of them. One of the problems with the saw is lack of rigidity, and that allows vibrations to happen in the saw and in the wire. There's some anomaly that (I think) happens when the wire vibrates at a frequency that coincides with the RPM of the pulley, and it ends up wearing unevenly. Like "cupping" on a tire of a vehicle that has alignment issues. It ends up wearing through the plastic on one side only. It took about 10hrs of run time before this first happened.

 

[MossRoad]

Kinda neat!? I thought my unnecessarily graphic intro, misapplied theatrical musical score, and laughably false bravado would have clued everyone in that it's in fact the coolest thing anyone's ever seen. I mean hell, just look at what I named it!

You bet! Thanks for watching!

It's abrasive cutting so requires relative motion (slippage) to cut. Same reason your tires aren't (immediately) cut through by the abrasive highway, my pulleys aren't (immediately) cut through by the wire. Start doing burnouts though, and that goes out the window. There's no relative motion between the pulley and wire, I made sure of it. I made these pulleys out of UHMW (cut/abrasion resistant plasic - same thing cutting boards are made of) and machined them to a specific profile such that the wire is drawn down deep into the pulley and pinched from two sides for maximum traction.

View attachment 734108

And I designed the pulleys in such a way that they offer their own dust protection to the bearings so that I could remove the dust shields from the bearings (those dust shields cause a lot of drag). Also flushed the grease out of the bearings and used light oil instead. They spin like a top now, takes a couple minutes for them to stop spinning when the wire breaks.

All that said, I have cut through a couple of them. One of the problems with the saw is lack of rigidity, and that allows vibrations to happen in the saw and in the wire. There's some anomaly that (I think) happens when the wire vibrates at a frequency that coincides with the RPM of the pulley, and it ends up wearing unevenly. Like "cupping" on a tire of a vehicle that has alignment issues. It ends up wearing through the plastic on one side only. It took about 10hrs of run time before this first happened.

Well, duh. For some reason my brain didn't compute the pulley was spinning.

Thanks.

 

[strantor]

Dynamite is old school low speed stuff. Need some modern plastics. Enough of it and I'm sure you can make any size chunk of iron into manageable pieces. Either that or send it into orbit

well I don't have a federal explosives license and I can't recipes on the internet for that stuff.

 

[strantor]

After I'm done cutting the forklift I'll probably decommission the saw and reclaim my unistrut hardware. Is there anything anyone is curious to see cut before I do?