VIDEO: How to Safely Cut Metal with Conventional Cut-Off Wheels

Hi I'm Rick Nelson, Technical Trainer at Norton and today we're going to talk about conventional cutoff wheels. We'll talk about proper handling, mounting, cutting and takedown. The first thing we'll do is remove the wheel from the box and visually inspect for any damage. If you see any chips or cracks in the wheel, don't use it, it's unsafe.

Now that we've visually inspected the wheel, we'll go over the proper mounting techniques. Before we do that, you always want to follow your lockout/tagout procedures and make sure you've killed the power to the machine. Now that we've visually inspected the wheel and locked out the machine, we'll remove the guard to mount the wheel [Music]. You want to make sure that the bearing surface on your flanges is smooth, flat, clean of burrs and you also want to make sure that your flanges have a recess cut out. You don't want them straight all the way across. You also want to make sure that they're both the same size. You don't want to use two different diameter flanges because you could put unwanted stress in the wheel then. You want to also make sure that your blotters are nice and clean and the reasoning for that is as you mount the wheel you want to make sure that they lay flat up against your flange [Music].

Now that the wheel has been tightened up, we want to close up the guard. Now that the wheel has been properly mounted and the guard has been secured, we can unlock the machine. And now it's time to put on our PPE. Now that I have all the proper PPE on. I'll secure the workpiece down and we're ready to cut [Music]. Now that we're done cutting, you want to make sure you shut the machine off. Wait 'til the wheel comes to a complete stop before attempting to touch it and also remember the wheel might still be hot from doing some of the cutting. So once the wheel has come to a complete stop, you want to follow your lockout/tagout procedures and shut the power off to the machine. So now that the power is cut to the machine, we'll open the guard up and we'll take the wheel off [Music]. So if you plan on using the wheel again, make sure it has no visible damage that occurred during cutting and place it in a dry, flat, humidity controlled area. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below.