Official Flood coolant MOD for the 4x6 Harbor Freight saw PART 1 #harborfreight #saw

so when it comes to cutting material in the home shop i would guarantee that the vast majority of us have a saw very similar to this the harbor freight 4x6 bandsaw which is pretty iconic really in the home machinist world very capable little saw affordable and with a few minor modifications uh pretty reliable at least this one has been there's been one thing that i wish that this saw had ever since the day that i got it that it doesn't and that is a coolant system not a missed coolant system not a drip coolant system but a full-fledged recirculating flood coolant system it makes saw blades last much longer and you just get a better finish better cut i mean all around nicer so what i want to do is make a coolant system for this that's easy to install doesn't require any major modifications to this saw allows you to still use it in the vertical position and allows you to move this thing around and not splash cooling everywhere and make a big mess so let's get started coming up with the design and put a coolant system on this thing i think it'll be fun so right off the bat let's talk about what i don't want and that is some big huge pan under this thing that has coolant exposed inside the shop that stops me from moving this saw around and makes a huge mess what i do want is a small coolant tank or sump and as small of as small of a drip pan as possible trying to take advantage as much as we can of the current design without doing too much changes to this thing and still get the desired result which is ninety percent of our coolant returned back to the sump and not a big mess on the floor ah so so after several long minutes of thought this is what i've come up with my cardboard aided design this is the base of the coolant tray that will go on this saw so we've got a ledge here that will be slightly bent up that'll catch any coolant that goes down through with the vise area of the saw because this saw be set on level ground we'll level the saw slightly can't the bottom of the tray that way any coolant that gets in here will run down to this back corner and then down to the sump so this will obviously have a small lip around it we're not going to make some huge coolant tray because it doesn't need to be it just needs to be big enough to catch the coolant and what i plan to do to attach this to the saw because i'm a welder by trade i am going to weld this tig weld this to the base of the saw not only will that seal this around the legs but it will also add a lot of rigidity to the base of the saw not that it needs it when it's put together proper i hear people say that these are floppy and you know not rigid i don't think that's true at all i think they're plenty rigid when the bolts are good and tight so let's cut this out of sheet metal more carefully than we cut it out of cardboard and uh yeah so here's a small piece of the steel that i'm going to be using this is the steric sheet metal gauge and 20 gauge is the steel that i'm going to be using 20 gauge happens to be around 40 thousandths or one millimeter in case you were wondering so the cabinets that i have on the wall had angled tops on them so you couldn't set things on top of the cabinets as well as you know load them up on the inside i took those angled tops off because i wanted to be able to set stuff on top of my cabinets and i kept them and this is the steel from it so i'm glad i did and uh now i've got more storage and some extra steel [Music] oh [Music] my [Music] so we've got our coolant pan laid out on this piece of sheet metal here i need to take it over to the band saw cut out the profile and then we'll attempt to bend up these sections here i don't have a sheet metal break nor do i have a set of pliers with the wide jaws that you would use for drip edge or gutter work which would really be handy to bend up these small sections but we'll try the vice maybe that'll work but let's first get it cut out so lucky for you i lost the bandsaw footage actually the file got corrupted of me cutting this piece out but you didn't miss much because cutting sheet metal in a band saw is obnoxiously loud here i'm bending up the pieces in the vise the pieces that are the bins that i can make in this vise anyway which was probably 50 of the bins that needed to be made and the others i just uh done the old-fashioned way with a mallet and an auto body dolly it worked pretty well actually [Laughter] so that sheet metal actually bent pretty well we'll weld up these corners and stuff that way it doesn't leak got a couple little holes there that'll have to be welded up as well this will get painted but let's test fit it it's gonna fit at all yeah actually it's pretty good and actually lines up really good it'll be welded here that is awesome i think it's actually going to work really well that's a problem how i didn't catch that i don't know so this will just need to be shortened a bit but i don't think that it will matter because it really only needs to come out to there anyway so we'll cut about an inch off that so the fitment of this pan is surprisingly good got the saw leveled i don't want this pan to be level though i want it to slope down to this back corner where my drain is going to be so i want this whole pan in relationship to the saw to be angled down to this back corner so i've made sure with a level inside of the pan to make sure that it does have that slope in it i've marked the legs of the saw because that's where i'm going to be welding this pan to the feet or to the to the base of the saw we'll take it this pan over to the welding bench weld up the corners clean it up get me remove all the paint from the areas we're going to be welding and start putting it on i think it's going to work good [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you seen it trying to trip me [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i believe i'd call that a success at least in the trial stage anyway so while you weren't looking i welded up a coolant tank for this thing it's four inches by six inches by ten inches it's going to bolt up under the foot of this thing the pump will actually go down inside of this and show you where it's going to go i have not got the pump yet hopefully in the next day i'll get that so that'll just be bolted to the leg here and uh you can remove it if you want to with some thumb screws that's the idea so hopefully that works let's see if we can get that mounted up ow oh gosh that hurt show me your boo-boo it's here where right there oh let me kiss it oh thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] so [Music] bye [Applause] oh so [Music] so gonna fit better fit [Laughter] uh so this is some flexible blue quarter inch od tubing and that's what i'm going to be running the coolant from the pump to the valve and then from the valve to the distributor which we still have to make it's just a compression fitting and then this is just a simple on off valve so there's the coolant tank all painted here's the pump that i'm going to be using it this is the pump out of the big do all vertical bands so i pulled it out of that because i ordered another one exactly like this but my order was delayed so i decided to pull this one out of that saw and then put a new one in it but little giants the maker 54 from amazon i believe 120 volts so it's the same voltage as the saw i can wire it into the circuitry of this saw that way the main on off switch turns on or off the pump i'll also have a switch here where i can disable the pump if i want but this puts out enough coolant for the big dewalt saw and pumps through its entire coolant system so i know it'll do all right for this little saw plus i custom built the tank for this to fit in [Music] [Music] there you go uh so so that holds quite a bit actually so this is pretty exciting i've wanted a coolant system on this saw since the day that i got it unfortunately we are not going to be able to see this thing run this week there's still so much to do and i don't have time to to finish it off still need to still need to make the distributor for this thing still need to test run it although i'm pretty confident that that pump will have no problem supplying coolant to the blade gotta tie in the electricity for the pump so it works the way that i want to we need to test run this thing to make sure that the blade doesn't carry around a bunch of fluid and it leak outside of the pan i mean on and on and on there is still quite a bit to do although i don't have a lot of time in this and i do believe about anybody who has some basic hand tools and the drive to try to do it could achieve the same thing so no no rocket surgery here so that's it tune in next week if you want to see this thing succeed or fail but eventually it will succeed i assure you so that's it thanks for watching thanks to my viewers patrons subscribers and anybody who supported me on this project much appreciated this will look better once it gets all one color so that's it thanks for watching and i'll see you next time [Music] as the light leaves your eyes hold on to your dream oh i know you wanna scream since the day you're born you're just a flower on your own waiting for the [Music] hoping to break through the storm

Channel: Steve Summers

Views: 35,041

Rating: 4.9734807 out of 5

Keywords: Machining, lathe, shaper, welding, awesome, funny, metal, threading, tools, repair, fix, diy, harborfreight, bandsaw, cutting, tig, weldpro

Id: RPPqi_0K66o

Length: 27min 21sec (1641 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 21 2021