From the manual

Tool, Stainless or Alloy steel 80FPM

Bearing Bronzes, Mild Steel, Hard brass or Bronze 120FPM

Soft Brass, Alluminium, other light materials 200FPM

I have a similar bandsaw and leave it on the middle setting for everything…

Ed, your carbon steel blade may be just fine and may last a long while. If it loses teeth or breaks repeatedly though, consider replacing it with a bimetal HSS type blade from a good name supplier like Starrett or Lennox etc. I've had exceptionally long life with my blades of this type, in many types of steel including tool steels and stainless, as well as copper based alloys and aluminum alloys. My saw runs at a fixed speed of 150 FPM for all. I never force it, just let it cut, and it does the job asked of it. Good luck with your saw.

Admittedly I have the smaller saw than yours but have had all sorts of trouble with bimetal blades – they seem to be much stiffer and stress the weld in the tight twists – eventually breaking before the teeth are close to being worn.

The good news is though that flexible HCS blades (such as those from tuffsaws **LINK**) will cut just fine – even cutting silver steel and stainless without too much trouble. My bandsaw stays set on the slowest speed as it's too much of a fiddle to change and that way my blade lasts longest and it doesn't take too long.

HTH

Jon

Me too, but I was able to fix it.

Of all the Chinese gear I've bought, the bandsaw was by far the roughest. It came with a Carbon Blade that only lasted a few months, but at least the blade wore out without breaking. I replaced it with an expensive bimetal blade that snapped across the weld after about a month. However, whilst fitting the new blade, I'd noticed quite a few minor problems with the bandsaw:

• The blade wasn't running quite true through the rollers.
• It was impossible to adjust the blade tension properly because the cast body of the saw fouled the adjuster. Not by much, 10 minutes with a file fixed it before fitting the second blade.
• After fitting the second blade, suspicions aroused, I first made certain the blade was true before listening carefully to the blade running off load. I heard a tiny periodic click traced to a slight ridge on the motor end drive wheel, again a casting problem. This too was easily fixed with less than 60 seconds filing.

I think the first bimetallic blade broke because the weld was stressed by the combination of over-tensioning, slight twist, and bumping over a ridge. Since applying the fixes the second blade appears to be immortal. It's still cutting well after nearly 5 years. For reasons of laziness I usually run the saw at it's lowest speed, which probably helps too.

Despite the problems and obvious shortcomings, this cheap bandsaw is by far the most appreciated tool in my workshop. It cuts straighter than I do while saving huge amounts of time and much hard labour!

Might be worth giving yours a critical inspection, quite likely it would benefit from a little fettling.

Dave