What can be done with an electric jigsaw

You can often hear that in the collection of every home craftsman should be a jigsaw. But how many of us know what can be done with a jigsaw?

The scheme of sawing wood with an electric jigsaw.

Meanwhile, the operations that are carried out by this tool, today there are many. First of all, he will be interested in those craftsmen who are not satisfied with a somewhat coarse hacksaw. The jigsaw is primarily designed for work that requires a particularly high quality of finishing and maximum cutting precision. In particular, if the master conceived with his own hands to make a stylish wardrobe or cut the original wooden trim to the wall, the use of a jigsaw is almost inevitable.

What is an electric jigsaw?

This device belongs to the class of cutting tools, powered by an electric drive. In fact, this is an electrified version of the manual jigsaw. The working cutting body of it is a rather narrow saw blade, which cuts the workpiece due to reciprocating movements in the vertical plane.

Because of its structural features, including due to the relatively small size of the file, using the specified power tool, you can perform a variety of cutting work straight and curved configuration. The use of the device also allows you to cut through wooden (plastic) panels and blanks through holes of various sizes and shapes. In this case, the thinner the saw blade will be, and the faster it moves during operation, the thinner the cut edges will be.

The jigsaw device.

To date, there are known for the design and purpose of jigsaw. So, they are divided into manual and stationary, for home use and professional models (designed for a fairly long and intensive operation in conditions, for example, a furniture factory).

There are also electric saws with one or two handles. The first option is sometimes called marching, as it does not imply the presence in the cutting place of special devices for rigid fixation of the workpiece. To hold the performer the workpiece is necessary with the other hand.

Accordingly, two-handed models are good because they can be held with both hands, while the workpiece is firmly fixed with any fixing devices to the base of the machine. This circumstance as a result has a very favorable effect on the high quality of the processing of the workpiece.

What and how you can make a jigsaw: functionality

This power tool can produce a wide range of cutting operations. First of all, it concerns various works in the construction and repair sector, in the manufacture of furniture products, as well as for the daily management of the household, when it is periodically necessary to do minor repairs and restoration works.

This application was made possible thanks to the design of the electric jigsaw.

A thin saw, an active drive from an electric motor and a flat platform on the body of the mechanism provide a sufficiently fast and high-quality sawing out of sheets of lumber of very different contour patterns and complexity.

Electric jigsaw blades.

With the jigsaw you can make various connecting components with a fairly high degree of accuracy. The specified power tool is used in the production of accurate oblique cutting in the places of the angular joints of wooden (plastic) blanks with each other. The jigsaw is practically irreplaceable in cases when fitting trimming is performed at the joints of flat wooden panels.

A special field of application of the device is the manufacture of various openwork wooden cladding for individual items of furniture, as well as for the whole room interior. In this area, jigsaw traditionally has no equal. With its help, talented craftsmen create absolutely unique in shape and beauty wall shelves, furniture facades, wall decoration details, etc.

The possibilities of artistic use of the jigsaw are due to its design. The small width of the saw blade and its fixation in the body of the device with only one end significantly increases the maneuverability of the mechanism.

Thanks to this design, with a jigsaw, you can still cut holes that are different in diameter and shape (figures with a closed contour) without disturbing the outer contour of the cut out figure. To do this, it is necessary, first of all, to drill an initial hole on the workpiece, which in diameter should be equal to (or slightly larger) the width of the saw blade. Then the file is inserted into the hole, the electric drive is turned on and the jigsaw starts to be wired along the contour marked with a pencil. It should be noted that this function in many cases can be very important and even decisive.

Some factors that affect the functionality of the jigsaw

The choice of speed jigsaw for different materials.

Traditionally jigsaws are used for processing wood materials or blanks of soft materials (plastic, plasterboard panels, laminate). However, thanks to the use of saw blades made of special metals and their special structures, today the range of functionality of this power tool has expanded significantly. In particular, at present jigsaws are actively used when cutting metal sheets, fragile pieces of glass and ceramics.

Any electric jigsaw works on the basis of the principle of transformation through a special gearbox of the rotational motion of the rotor of an electric motor into reciprocating movements of the saw blade. It should be borne in mind that the quality of cutting depends largely on a number of technical factors.

So, relatively cheap jigsaws often differ by not very powerful electric motors. Because of this, the device is quite difficult to develop a high cutting speed - this is the key to high quality processing of workpieces.

In order that this factor does not affect the quality, in many jigsaws a pendulum mechanism is provided. With its help, the sawing movement is quite complex along the path, not only up / down, but also slightly forward / backward.

Such an additional “wiggle” of the work element performs preliminary filing of the material in front of the leading edge of the teeth of the blade. The pendulum trajectory makes it possible not only to increase the cutting speed of the workpiece, but also noticeably reduces the vibration and wear of the web, since not all teeth are simultaneously involved in the work. In addition, with such a path of movement of the nail file, its heating is reduced and chips from the cutting place are effectively retracted.

In expensive models of electric jigsaw, this option can be adjusted. This, as a rule, is done in order to connect one or another mode of working amplitude when switching from one processed material to another. In particular, the maximum amplitude of the forward / backward departure of the file is used in cases when a soft wood billet is cut. Medium-sized pendulum amplitudes are used for extremely accurate and clean cuts of solid wood or plastic panels.

On the effectiveness of the device affects the level of vibration. Low vibration makes the quality of the cut higher and the operation of the equipment more convenient for the worker. This factor must be taken into account when buying a tool, pre-checking it for the degree of vibration.

How to choose a jigsaw: a few useful tips

The first requirement that should guide the master when buying a jigsaw is the type of work for which it is purchased. For example, for rectilinear cutting of chipboard, plywood, foam plastic and other relatively soft materials, the presence of a pendulum device, as mentioned above, is very useful in the device diagram. However, if the jigsaw plan to carry out figure sawing wood materials, the presence of a pendulum "supplement", which also increases the cost of equipment, is not necessarily.

In order to work effectively with a jigsaw on sheet metal, one should pay attention to the mechanisms with high power of the electric motor and especially rigid mounting of the saw blade. Standard options for electric jigsaws designed for cutting are usually consumed in the range of 280-550 watts.

At the same time for cutting metal it is necessary to choose electric jigsaws with a high speed of movement of the file. At the same time, a low speed of reciprocating oscillation of the web will be sufficient for plastic.

Thus, the choice of optimal cutting equipment does not constitute a big deal. If you do everything according to the requirements for electric jigsaws, then a very useful and effective tool will appear in the workshop of the home craftsman, which can be used every day.