I have a nice sheet of brushed stainless steel off a new dishwasher. It is about 1/8" thick. I would like to take my old plastic dash panels and use them for templates. Question is, what can I cut the holes with for the gauges?

certain types of Stainless are very tough,,, although a hole saw might work, for the best results you should probably have a machine shop put them on a milling machine and bore out the holes

We use all carbide tooling, hole saw may work if you use plenty of oil to keep it lubricated.



Cougarman

main thing to remember is to turn SLOWLY. Slow enough you can count the revs.

A guy I work with has a brother in law who purchased a water jet (a water fed torch) He cut out a harley davidson logo on a 1/2" copper for me. It runs off a computer program that he made. I think he just copied the picture as a jpeg and made changes from there. Should work great for this application.

Milwaukee hole saws in a drill press using cutting oil. You can use clay from Wal Mart's flower section to make a dam to keep the oil in the cut.

120 feet per minute is the cutting speed you need to hit. Stainless is softer than mild steel and it is very susceptible to galling at incorrect cutting speeds. If you're doing 2 5/8" gauges, the cutting speed is going to be 175 RPM. Take diameter x pi and divide cutting speed (1440 ipm) by that number for RPM. Use the same figure for sawing.

Too slow and the cutter will fill up with chips galled to the teeth, too fast and you'll smoke the blade.

Um, what was that dishwasher? An industrial unit? If not, then the ss must be thinner than 1/8. Anyways, I've used hole saws successfully in the past. Turn them very slow and flood the surface with oil. Try to pump the oil into the teeth.

Doesnt your wife get mad when you strip her appliances for boat parts?

Be sure to lay it on a piece of wood and cut thru into the wood. This will reduce the bellmouthing and keep it from grabbing when it breaks thru.

Waterjet is definitely a cool unit, but you should expect to pay about a buck for each 2 inches of linear cut. Most places have a $75 minimum on their waterjet for retail customers.

I can laser etch stainless if you need to add any text or logo's to your finished panels.