How would I cut this

Chopsaw would probably be the best, you'd need a wheel that works with Aluminium though.
 
A chopsaw uses an abrasive cutting wheel, so it'd be the same blade for any material.

You can find metal cutting blades for circular saws.....very fine teeth, and they do a fairly decent job. I've seen aluminum grating cut with that type of blade.

The problem you might run into with either of those is cleaning up the ends of the material after the cutting. Both would tend to leave a lot of material behind, on either side of the cut, that you'd have to clean up, most likely with a file. Pain in the butt, IHMO.

You might want to see if you can find someone that has a metal cutting bandsaw. The blades for those are very fine toothed, sort of like a hacksaw (tho not that fine!!), and tend to leave behind a LOT less material to clean up afterwards. A little slower cutting, but you'll save time in the long run. Bandsaws can be large floor mounted models (useful for cutting large stock), or small portable models, that can be hand-held.

If you don't know anyone that has one of those, you might consider checking with a local pipe or metal sales business (they have to have some way to do those custom cuts), or possibly even a machine shop. If you're not having them cut 100 pieces for you, and suck up a little, you might even get 'em to do it for you, for free. :cool:
 
Yeah, kinda funny I didn't mention a bandsaw even though my pop's got one out in his shop on the farm. Definitely better than a chopsaw.
 
Nivram said:
A chopsaw uses an abrasive cutting wheel, so it'd be the same blade for any material.:
Click to expand...

Same for grinders too, ehh? I've personally witnessed a grinder wheel explode after an unsupervised student decided to do some power grinding of an aluminum block. The same grinder wheel had lost 2 other wheels from the same reason. An abrasive blade won't manage much better. It'd be fine for grates where its not much material (and stays cool), but never for blocks/bars. Aluminum tends to stick to the material and in clumps (its a pain to tap threads into), then heats up (metal-to-metal after lots of depositing), expands, and then shatters the wheel or blade. There's a reason that aluminum and copper bars always have slightly serrated look at the cut - always use a metal blade. Bandsaws would be the best option, although they can be costly and bulky. The cheaper ones also tend to need lots of adjustments to keep the cut straight. IMO just use a hacksaw, a big rasp, two files that are medium & ultrafine, and some time.
 
lasers or waterjets would be the best thing for this, if you could afford them. There may be some companies that would do the work for you. This way you can get the exact same cut each time and have minimal material loss
 
ive built robots with this stuff... the abrasive sawblade works great with steel but this is Al. if you get a decent chop saw blade it will go thrugh it like butter. remeber -- Al is reletivly soft. you will of course need to do some deburing with a file, but you would have to do that no matter how you cut it
 
id ither use a horizontal metal cutting band saw, or a virtical one, but more in your price range would be a standard chopsaw, if your really broke theres always a hacksaw that will do the job
 
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