Mitre or chop saw for small Ally sections?.

To be fair any mitre or chop saw designed for wood with a carbide blade will cut ali. A bit of WD40 as a lubricant will stop chips sticking to the blade.

Yes, I did that but try to use the Rage chop saw now. Get the blade with the most teeth you can find, and wear safety glasses and a mask - the chips get everywhere. A word of warning - I killed my first chop saw because the chips got in to the ventilation ducts - I'm not near it right now to check, but I'm fairly sure that the Rage saw doesn't have air intakes.

Back in the day we used an electric wood crosscut saw for heat sink extrusions

In the long term you will probably get more use from a mitre saw unless you plan to cut a lot of metal over time. Most reputable mitre saw manufacturers will provide a metal saw suitable for Aluminium for both mitre saws and table saws, Evolution being the most notable. If you do go for Evolution then check carefully as the industry standard blade bore is

Richard

Woss this? Wooden heat sinks? Now there's a thought. Wooden bank on them though.

Doan be silli. Dey wos 'aluminum'

Although you can get adaptor rings to allow larger bore blades to fit on smaller arbours.

If using mitre saw beware flying chips. They can be very hot

Saxton blades often come with reducing rings

Their 185mm blade, 30mm bore with 16, 20, 25mm and 25.4mm reduction rings. Ditto with their 210mm blade.

Their 160mm blade has a 20mm bore with a 16mm reducing ring.

Indeed!

Probably not much of a problem on the mitre saw since it is throwing them away from you. More an issue on hand held circular saws though!

(as I found out to my cost on my most recent metal working project when I thought it might be handy to stick a metal cutting blade in my "normal" 18V saw. It cut nicely, but it was hard to avoid the hot flying bits!)

Proper metal cutting circular saws have far more "enclosed" guarding and a reservoir in the guard designed to catch and collect the chips:

An aside - circular saws don't seem to have a laser guide nowadays. Why? I find them quite useful . . .

Some of the mitre saws still do, but perhaps it was considered more of a gimmick on handheld saws?

(that and I suppose if you want really accurate cutting on a handheld saw these days you would get a track saw)

I find laser guides easily get knocked out of alignment and even where you can adjust them it is a PITA to put right.

There was also some question as to the laser actually being aligned correctly to the blade.

My mitre saw shines a light from the top of the blade which casts a shadow of the blade on the work piece to enable the work piece to be accurately positioned to the correct side of the blade. The downside is that it doesn't work if used in bright sunlight but just about OK outdoors in shade on a sunny day. OK indoors with normal room lighting.

Thanks to All who replied!.

Borrowed a small chop saw, worked very well!, choice now is the get a small chop saw or a sliding one?.

Decisions decisions!!

Size matters (!!) but rigidity is important too (!!!) Some of the cheap sliding chop saws are too floppy, so either spend a chunk of money or get a non-sliding saw. BTW, ref my earlier comment, make sure the aluminium chips can't get in to the saw via the air vents.

Go to a car boot, pay not much.

Yes looking at that !..

Yes noted..