The first thing you should do is get a good blade
capable of cutting aluminum. Make sure that your fence is at least
an inch above the cutting surface, and that it does not have more than
one cut in it (if you have previously used the fence to cut angles for
example, you will need to replace it with a new fence). The force
of your blade on the aluminum is considerable, and may break weaker
fences (guess what happened to me... There's now a new dent in the
wall behind my RAS saw. Luckily, no injuries resulted) With the new fence in place, put a stop-board two inches from the cutting edge of the blade For some reason, the picture to the right does not show my stop board, though I did use one. This will help make sure each piece is exactly the same length. Lastly, use a clamp or a board to keep the end piece of the L-Bar against the fence. My first few cuts resulted in the end piece shearing (shown below). In my case, I used a clamp. I had to cut a slight notch in my fence so that the engine of the RAS saw could clear the clamp. It occurred to me later that I could have simply used a board clamped to the cutting surface, perpendicular to the fence, to hold the L-Bar in place. A quick test showed that this was also a viable solution. To the right is a picture of two pieces of L-bar -- one cut while clamped to the fence, and one that was not clamped to the fence. |
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A stop board is simply a piece of wood clamped parallel to the fence
of a drill press, miter saw or radial arm saw. When cutting a
piece of wood, slide the piece of wood along the fence until it hits the
stop board and make your cuts. Using a stop board produces much
more consistent cuts than hand measuring, as there is no possibility of
transfer error. Make sure no dust or debris gets between your cut
piece and your stop board though, as this will effect the consistency of
the cut. One idea to help prevent this is to cut a small notch in
the bottom of the stop board to receive dust from the previous cut.
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