A common speed for the bandsaw is about one thousand feet per minute. Wood can effectively be cut at much higher speeds, up to and over five thousand feet per minute, but you should keep it slower because it's safer. A blade running at five thousand feet per minute is capable of taking off one or more fingers with the slightest of slip-ups.

A thousand feet per minute is also a very good speed for cutting aluminum. It will give a nice, clean cut, and the cut will proceed along at a very acceptable rate.

Cutting thick aluminum

To cut steel, you'll need to run the machine at a much slower speed -- about a hundred feet per minute. A machine running at this speed might look like it's running too slowly, but running it any faster almost guarantees that you'll damage the blade. You'll actually heat up the tips of the teeth to the point where they soften and almost melt away; they're abraded away by the steel and the blade will then no longer cut. This is the reason why many prototypes are built out of aluminum instead of steel.

Cutting steel

Brass is a common material to use for bushings and other small precision parts. This material should be cut at roughly the same speeds that you'd cut steel, possibly a little higher.

Because of the diversity in the material properties of plastics, you will either need to look up in a manufacturer's data sheet to learn proper cutting speeds, or just experiment a little. Nylon, because it's relatively flexible, can be cut at a wide range of speeds and get a very acceptable cut.

Materials such as acrylic, which is very brittle, can have problems at both high and low speeds. Look at the picture above. This piece was cut at two speeds: one part was cut at low speed and instead of cutting smoothly, the teeth chipped away at the piece, leaving a rough finish. The rest of the cut was done at high speed, and there is another problem: the blade is heating up the material enough to actually cause it to melt.