band saw speed for metal?

few important points:
all materials have an ideal cutting speed range usually measured in surface feet per minute. in your case, the blade is probably high speed steel and the material is mild steel? google " mild steel HSS SFM" and see what comes up. I get 10-125 sfm. this means that your 12" wheel on the band saw needs to spin in the neighbourhood of 40 RPM. this sounds reasonable, as thats the RPM of the metal cutting bandsaw at my local makerspace.
next, each cutting tool has a feed rate. in the case of a drill bit, it is very high. in the case of a band saw it is very low. an ideal situation is to have 3-5 teeth of the saw engaged in the cut at any given time. lower than this and the blade will skip and bounce, then it will tear off teeth and then the blade is not long for this world. more than this and the blade will clog. the gullet between the teeth is where the chips go as the saw cuts. if its fine toothed in a long cut, the gullet fills up with cuttings then it is just adding drag while not cutting until it leaves the work piece and can be cleared. this also kills blades. the same goes for holesaws. most people ram the hole saw through and after the first 1/8th of an inch the saw just burns and overheats. you have to drill a few revolutions, lift the hole saw out to clear then repeat until you get through.

this also means that thicker material needs coarser blades. a 1" bar needs 3-5 tpi, a tube with 1/4" wall needs ~10 tpi