Cutting bundles of A615 steel-small round bars

Today I helped a customer cutting A615 rebar steel. They had 49 pieces of 1-1/4” solid round bars bundled together. We needed to help them get the fastest cutting time they could, for their production requirements are very high!
Whenever I cut small round bars in a big bundle, I know we are going to have issues stripping out the teeth on the saw blade if were not careful. Since the steel from the mill is never EXACTLY 1-1/4”, or whatever size you have ordered, the possibilities of your bars spinning during the cut are common. When the bar spins, you lose teeth on the blade-regardless of the manufacturer of the blade. To help combat this, we welded the ends of the bar together, clamped the material as tightly as we could using the band saws top and side clamps, and used wood wedges in the event a bar became loose during the cut. We tried a number of different speeds and feeds to try and find the sweet spot for his production requirements as well as trying to give him the best blade life I could. As you know, faster cuts mean less blade life. It’s a balancing act when you need both. We were able to cut his bundle of 49 pieces with 60 total square inches of material cutting at 8 minutes beautifully. We were cutting faster (around 6:30 per cut), but I felt that the increased speed and feed rate in doing that might create an opportunity for more of those spinners I spoke of earlier. As of this minute, the blade has been cutting for 2.5 days and is still going strong!
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-Joe Bandsaw