Cutting speed on aluminum has me questioning 10 years of work

So I was doing a repair on a Ford F-150 bedside last Tuesday, and my new coworker Tim watched me run my grinder at full speed like I always do. He just quietly said 'try backing it off to half speed and see what happens.' I thought he was crazy, but I gave it a shot on the next panel. The difference was night and day - no heat warping, no gummed up discs, and the finish was way cleaner. I honestly felt stupid that it took me 10 years and a 22 year old kid to figure that out. Has anyone else had a simple tip from a younger tech totally change how you work?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_miles8d ago

I mean, okay, it's a good tip and all, but let's not act like you just reinvented the wheel here. Half the guys I know run their grinders slower on aluminum because that's just basic metal working knowledge. You hear stuff like this all the time about old timers learning from the new guys, but it usually goes the other way too. I've seen plenty of young kids try to use a die grinder on sheet metal and turn it into a rag in about two seconds. It's a nice story, but maybe don't make it sound like your whole decade of work was a lie just because one guy showed you a different way.

emma_baker618d ago

You said "half the guys I know run their grinders slower on aluminum" and that's actually the part that's got me thinking. Nobody's talking about what happens when you take that logic and apply it to a grinder with a wire wheel or a flap disc on something really soft like copper or brass. I've watched people on stainless jobs burn the hell out of their material with high speed because they think slow is only for aluminum, but copper is even more picky about heat buildup. The real lesson from that story isn't that the guy was dumb for a decade, it's that specific materials have specific sweet spots that aren't always taught in trade school. So yeah, half the guys you know might run slow on aluminum, but I bet half of them still scream through something like magnesium or thin-wall tubing without thinking twice.

dylan4637d ago

Yeah @emma_baker61 hit it, that applies to half the stuff we do daily.