How To Choose The Right Tooth Geometry For Your Saw Blade:
When it comes to circular saw blades, selecting the right blade for your application and material can be challenging without experience. Leitz tooling is the global market leader in saw blade technology and thanks to out 149+ year history, we are well positioned to offer advice to help you choose the right saw blade geometries.
The Right Saw Blade Geometries for Solid Wood – Cross Cut (Across Grain):
When machining solid wood, the wrong saw blade choice can cause costly rework due to damaging your timber with chipping or tear out. For machining solid wood across the grain, commonly called cross cutting, Leitz Tooling offers a large range of specialist saw blades.
Leitz Tooling recommend the alternative bevel (WZ) tooth shape for this kind of machining. Alternative bevel saw blades are designed to slice the wood fibres cleanly, which minimises tear-out and splintering. An ATB blade has teeth where the top edge is bevelled, and every other tooth is angled in the opposite direction. This alternating bevel creates a sharp, pointed edge that acts like a pair of knives or scissors, slicing through the wood fibres cleanly, much like you'd score the grain before a cut; resulting in better finish quality and reduced rework.
The Right Saw Blade Geometries for Solid Wood – Rip Cut (With Grain):
Cutting solid wood lengthwise, with the grain, is often called ripping and can use different tooth geometries based on requirements for finish quality. Thin kerf sawblades are very popular for this kind of solid wood sizing, as they maximise the yield on each piece of timber.
For solid wood ripping, Leitz Tooling typically recommends square tooth geometries (FZ), Square tooth, or flat top grind saw blades are is designed for maximum efficiency and material removal when cutting with the grain. When you cut along the grain (ripping), you are essentially separating wood fibres that run parallel to the cut. Unlike the fragile, pointed teeth of an Alternate Top Bevel (ATB) blade, the flat, square top of the FZ tooth is much stronger and more durable, which is essential for the heavy work of ripping thick, dense solid wood
The Right Saw Blade Geometries for Panel Sizing:
As panel materials have inconsistent filler, panel sizing saw blades require more comprehensive geometries to ensure high quality finishes across abrasive materials. It is common to use both diamond PCD saw blades and carbide saw blades, depending on the application and material being cut.
For panel processing, Leitz recommendations vary depending on your requirements on finish quality and costs. Productivity also plays a role as some tooth geometries are better for high speed machining:
Flat Tooth/Trapezoidal Tooth FZ-TR: FZ/TR saw blades are the most common and versatile combination for panel sizing, especially when using a scoring saw blade on a panel saw or sliding table saw. It's often referred to as Triple Chip Grind (TCG) when combined with a specific alternating tooth sequence. The trapezoidal tooth first breaks the abrasive surface material, and the flat tooth cleans the cut bottom, providing a smooth, chip-free finish on both the top and bottom edges of the panel when used in conjunction with a scoring saw blade.
Trapezoidal Tooth/Trapezoidal Tooth (TR/TR): TR/TR sawblades are recommended for manufacturers with high demands on finish quality, or where the saw blade is the final operation on the workpiece. Trapezoidal Tooth/Trapezoidal Tooth (TR/TR) saw blades offer improved surface finish on panel materials and are often suitable for higher feed rates, making them ideal for high-performance machinery. Although both FZ/TR and TR/TR saw blades reduce tear-out and chipping with panel materials, the TR geometry is more suited for minimal chipping and is recommended by Leitz for manufacturers demanding the best finish quality. This geometry is popular for PCD saw blades.
Scoring Saw Blades for Panel Sizing:
Regardless of your chosen tooth geometry for panel sizing sawblades, its important to consider using a scoring saw blade. Although Leitz do manufacture a range of different saw blades for sizing without scorers, for the best finish quality we always recommend using a scoring saw blade.
Mounted just ahead of the main saw blade, the small scoring saw blade rotates in the opposite direction (an upward cut). This pre-cutting motion cleanly scores a shallow groove into the panel material. When the larger, main saw blade follows to complete the cut, its teeth pass through this already-severed path without catching or tearing the material's bottom layer, thus guaranteeing a chip-free edge.
In terms of scoring saw blade geometries for panel materials, Leitz typically recommend canonical alternative top bevel (KON/WZ) or canonical flat teeth (KON/FZ) depending on material coting and desire cutting pressure. Both tooth shapes prevent splitting of the cut edge by the main sawblade as it passes through the bottom surface of the panel. However, KON/WZ saw blades do this with heavily reduced cutting pressures:
KON/FZ: Has a more robust tooth profile that stands up better to very hard, abrasive, or tough plastic coatings, ensuring durability and a clean score in demanding materials.
KON/WZ: Cuts with low cutting pressure, making it ideal for more delicate or sensitive surface materials where minimizing stress on the panel is important.
The Best Saw Blade Geometries For Mixed CNC Machining:
When it comes to CNC machining, manufacturers are typically machining a broad range of solid wood, panel and wood derives materials. Because of this, CNC saw blades often need to be more generalist than panel saw blades. Leitz Tooling make a large range of specialist CNC saw blades but also have a comprehensive range of flexible saw blade solutions such as the Katana saw blade for CNC.
For mixed material machining, the right tooth geometries depend of the type of material being cut. Leitz usually offers customers its Katana saw blade, which uses a universal alternative bevel / flat tooth (WZ/WZ/FZ). The Katana tooth combination uses an alternating rake face bevel for the best cutting quality. Combined with a high number of teeth for perfect edges and very smooth surfaces, this tooth geometry is very well suited for mitre cuts in coated wood materials.
How Tooth Geometry Impacts Saw Blade Sharpening:
When it comes to saw blade sharpening and servicing, tooth geometry is the leading measure for cost. Simple tooth shapes such as FZ saw blades require far less effort and specialised machinery to sharpen, resulting in a lower sharpening cost. In contrast, complex saw blades with combination geometries require much more effort and often different sharpening operations and processes for each tooth shape.
Sharpening your saw blade is almost always cheaper than purchasing a new blade. However, it is always worth considering service costs when choosing a saw blade. With Leitz saw blade sharpening, we use a mixture of specialised saw blade grinding and erosion machinery, combined with highly experienced and skilled technicians.
Complex Designs: Typcially a better finish quality and better machining performnace but increased sharpening costs.
Simple Designs: Significantly lower sharpening costs but often inferior finish quality and performnace to combination or complex geometries.
Contact and Technical Advice:
At Leitz Tooling UK Ltd we don’t just manufacture and supply high quality saw blades. We offer all our customers detailed and tailored saw blade and technical advice. We can help you choose the right saw blade and tooth geometry for your machine, application and material.
Contact our technical team today and see how we can help to improve your saw blades performance