Bosch has [finally!] come out with new jig saw blades that are designed for cutting plastic materials. Previously, if you wanted to cut plastic with Bosch jig saw blades, you could only choose from metal blades and wood blades designed for laminates. These new plastic-cutting jig saw blades are designed to make precision cuts that are cleaner and with less need for deburring.
Reduced Heating
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The new plastic-cutting blades are designed with a special relief in the teeth to shift heat away from the blade. A cooler blade means cooler plastic, which means less molten plastic bits that must be removed from freshly cut edges.
Reduced Chipping
The blades’ tooth geometries are designed to cut plastic materials with reduced chipping and breakage. This also means cleaner and more precise cuts.
Blade Styles
- PVC
- Plexiglas (acrylic)
- Polypropylene
- Carbon fiber
Buy Now via Home Depot:
PVC blades
PMMA blades (Plexiglas/acrylic)
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jesse
DeWalt had some nice ones when they were making cobalt jigsaw blades. As I recall they cut on the down stroke to reduce chipping, like laminate blades. It’s too bad DeWalt gave up on the cobalt line; they were more expensive, but worth it IMO.
mnoswad1
Bosch has blades that cut on the down stroke…….but you have to specifically look at the teeth pattern because they make no mention of that detail on the packaging. It just says “fine wood cutting” or something. They work very well, but require more downward pressure on the the jigsaw against the cutting surface or they can bounce back up at you, esp. when the blade slows after releasing the trigger at the end of a cut and you relax your grip on the tool.
Leaning over the cut I almost punched myself in the face with the back of a jigsaw once…..a few times.
I also found that turning off the orbital action makes for a cleaner cut.
Alfredo
Orbital action must NEVER be used on reverse tooth blades. As the blade roller goes forward during the rising stroke, this causes the blade to rub the tooth in the wrong direction, causing it to become dull. And Bosch clearly shows that their “reverse” tooth blades with an icon that has the word “reverse” along with the tooth spacing in millimeters. Finally, their reverse tooth blades add an “R”to the model number (like the reverse versión of the T101B, is the T101BR).
fred
For straight cutting plexiglass sheets – we use our 4-1/2 inch Porter Cable Worm Gear Trim saws and a steel blade that has reverse teeth:
http://weldwarehouse.securesites.net/cgi-bin/as2.pl?q=SELECT%20*%20FROM%20products2%20WHERE%20upc%20=%20'039404100405'%20ORDER%20BY%20number
This produces very clean cuts with minimal melting and no burning.
Fred
It really looks like the end tooth on both Japanese style pictured doesn’t have enough material and is likely to break off.
Drew M
I’ve been cutting a lot of carbon fiber lately and I was doing some googling and found this old post. FWIW, I think Bosch made a mistake on the T108BHM. It’s only 2-5/8″ long which makes it so short that I can’t see how you could even use it. I was using a 3″ blade on some highly contoured CF and I was continuously bumping the surface with the tip of the blade.
However, I’ve only used carbide grit blades on CF, which work really well if you go slow, but I wonder how these would do if Bosch made them longer.
Stuart
I’m thinking that they hadn’t considered that users might want to cut three dimensional carbon fiber assemblies, such as tubes or contoured constructs like you mentioned.
To be fair, I probably wouldn’t have considered it either.
I haven’t heard of any new plastic and composite-cutting jig saw blade developments since this post went up, but if there’s enough demand maybe we’ll see additional sizes or styles in the future.