Home Built Surface Grinder

[Natlek]

I was contemplating building a free standing stone surface grinder. Would have been close in cost. But this one was too appealing. Given the speed, space & weight savings, and accuracy within what I need, it was hands down a better option for me. Not for everyone.

BTW, I messed around some more, and tried milling some mild steel.

Here is my trusty-dusty, CRAPTACULAR mill set up.

This is a piece of mild steel. It is 1-1/4" wide. And that is one of the magnets I used. Oh! As a side note, they are very fragile, and will shatter when dropped! Even a short distance, LOL!

Just this 1-1/4" slot took me about a half hour. I used a 5/16" CARBIDE end mill, at the slowest speed my drill press goes, which is 760rpm. Slower would be better. If you choose to make the chuck from steel, on your own, just go very slow. But, YES! It can be done with a cheap, underpowered drill press.

@One Armed , maybe this way will be easy for you to do this ? Just cut proper size piece of steel and bolt them on some steel or alumimium plate .Distance between them to match magnets? Something like on picture ...red dots a small bolts ?

 

[Ken H>]

Mule: congrats on getting the bridgeport - that's a NICE mill. When you say "build magnetic chuck", are you referring to a real magnetic chuck with OFF 'n ON function? OR - the magnetic chuck like we're using on this project where it's ON all the time?

I had looked at building the OFF 'n ON type, but seemed to complex for my meager skills.

 

[One Armed]

@One Armed , maybe this way will be easy for you to do this ? Just cut proper size piece of steel and bolt them on some steel or alumimium plate .Distance between them to match magnets? Something like on picture ...red dots a small bolts ?

I'm not sure what you are saying Natlek. It sounds like you may have confused something? I'm sorry bud, are you asking for yourself, or recommending this?

 

[muleskinner222]

Mule: congrats on getting the bridgeport - that's a NICE mill. When you say "build magnetic chuck", are you referring to a real magnetic chuck with OFF 'n ON function? OR - the magnetic chuck like we're using on this project where it's ON all the time?

I had looked at building the OFF 'n ON type, but seemed to complex for my meager skills.

Thanks, I'm pretty excited!

I'm just looking at something simple like this project for now.

 

[One Armed]

My new to me Bridgeport arrives this Friday, I've been waiting for it to build a magnetic chuck. I am building a surface grinder attachment for myself, but I was thinking about building the magnetic chucks and selling them because they are hard to find and very expensive. Possibly even just machine slots in the blocks and let people source the magnets themselves.

Now that would be cool! I think you would already have a few interested parties here on something like that. Maybe a 3/4"x2.4"x12" A36 steel bar with 16 .400" wide by .187" deep slots? LOL.

 

[Natlek]

I'm not sure what you are saying Natlek. It sounds like you may have confused something? I'm sorry bud, are you asking for yourself, or recommending this?

Sorry for my broken english . What I mean is this .Instead of milling groves for magnet on drill pres , why you don t cut strip of steel in proper dimension and bolt them on steel plate and put magnet between them ?
Blue is steel red are magnets ? Under is plate Al or steel whatever . .. .. .

 

[One Armed]

Sorry for my broken english . What I mean is this .Instead of milling groves for magnet on drill pres , why you don t cut strip of steel in proper dimension and bolt them on steel plate and put magnet between them ?
Blue is steel red are magnets ? Under is plate Al or steel whatever . .. .. .

Ok, I get what you're saying. You certainly could do that. However, I see it being problematic from jump street. To start, the surface would be even more uneven and require more work to flatten. Also, not only the magnets, but also the screws would need countersunk below the surface. This thought crossed my mind in the beginning. I'm sure you could have it work. But I much prefer have a single milled piece.

 

[One Armed]

Made a short video for those interested to see how it works.

 

[Ken H>]

Looks good - I'm thinking I might should have made my surface grinder to mount vertical like you did. Without thinking it thru, I made for horizontal as Travis did for his TW90. The problem with horizontal is the grinding dust/sparks will be thrown to the side making more of a mess in shop. With the vertical setup, the grinding dust/sparks will be thrown toward the floor which should prevent them from spreading so much.

I'm hoping the slide rail will be here this afternoon and be able to test it later today.

 

[Don Hanson III]

I like the vertical much better (45 degs). Travis' on a KMG.
Have a vac exhaust at the end under the bench & it works very good.

 

[One Armed]

I like the vertical much better (45 degs). Travis' on a KMG.
Have a vac exhaust at the end under the bench & it works very good.

I set mine at 45 degs. as well.

Ken, I probably would have built mine horizontal if I could have as well. But I could only mount vertical. But now that I have it built, I like the 45 vertical. Just like you said, it throws all debris straight to the floor. I'm going to set up a catch can for it all as well.

 

[Ken H>]

Yep, if I do decide to go vertical it shouldn't be much trouble to change. A vacuum with a funnel would catch most all the grinding dust.

Darn UPS seems to have delivered my slide bar to the wrong house - they show "delivered at 4:35pm", but it ain't here! I've been here all afternoon and no UPS truck came here. I've got a quest into UPS, they're to call me back with info in the next hour or so. We'll see if they can find it anywhere, maybe... just "maybe" I can get tomorrow.

 

[LARRYZ10]

I have tool arms that fit my Travis Wuertz surface grinding attachment in both horizontal and vertical for both of my grinders and I have to say that I prefer the horizontal mounting. Either will work well so it should depend on your shop setup and where you collect the dust. I live in Sothern California so temperature is not a problem and I run fans with my garage /shop doors wide open. I think that I can watch the tapers a little better with the horizontal setup. Just my opinion once again. Larry

 

[Ken H>]

Thanks for your input Larry - I was thinking I'd like horizontal better myself, until I thought of the dust situation. I can always wheel the grinder outside for using the SG if need be. I do take grinder outside when I'm doing a lot of grinding, either wood or metal. I don't have a good dust collection system in place - as in none at all. Grinding dust is thrown mostly down where it's caught in a 5 gal bucket right up against the bottom of belt. For light grinding it works ok, but when doing heavy grinding I carry grinder outside.

 

[One Armed]

Yes, my shop (aka-tiny garage turned into an unfinished room), is HORRIBLE with dust!! The only thing I grind in there is steel, and I immediately vacuum after with a hepa filter installed. It's still bad. But it's a hobby. So I'm not in there all that much. Grinding wood, G10 & Carbon Fiber scales is done outside on the small grinder.

 

[Toni Oostendorp]

I was actually thinking of going with more like 20 and using 5mm x 10mm x 80mm and thinking of going with this since I dug deep enough and found it on their site. This would allow for cross feeding so you don't have to mess with belt tracking and doing wider material (up to 3.14" 80mm) Which you could probably do wider than that, it would just hang off the edge of the magnet.

View attachment 796913

Or instead of the above, just the one I posted originally and mounting this to it so it's configured like the above giving you x and z movement. X doesn't really need to be measured just move across till the entire material is ground.

View attachment 796914

I want to thank you guys for this thread! I have been looking at these surface grinders for some time, but my grinder is build in such a way that these attachments won’t fit and I have to build something myself. I was wondering if any of you have tried one of the cross feeders mentioned above. Wenn I looked at the specs I saw they are rated at 5 kg, which is not a whole lot.

 

[KnuckleDownKnives]

I want to thank you guys for this thread! I have been looking at these surface grinders for some time, but my grinder is build in such a way that these attachments won’t fit and I have to build something myself. I was wondering if any of you have tried one of the cross feeders mentioned above. Wenn I looked at the specs I saw they are rated at 5 kg, which is not a whole lot.

Not as of yet. I haven't had the time or funds with the holidays and closing on a house this Thursday. I haven't had much time in the shop for a couple of months.

 

[Stromberg Knives]

Thanks for the inspiration guys!

I've been looking for a better way of surface grinding, my process today involves my belt grinder, disc grinder and surface plate. But it's time consuming and not really giving me the precision I'd like. So I came across O One Armed 's build, and then @KenH 's and knew I had to build one myself. I sourced the parts a while ago but haven't had the time to get it all together. But I managed to get it done today. It was a fun build with a lot of small challenges for a non machinist. I learned a lot making it. Thanks @KenH and @kuraki for the tips about milling, I sourced a 10mm 3 flute 45 deg helix carbide end mill made for aluminium, it was like cutting hot butter, even with my mini mill.

I'm also waiting for some 75x2000 mm (3" x 78") belts. I built the SGA with a 75x200 mm (3"x8") serrated wheel so I can take full advantage of the 60x400mm (2,36" x 15 3/4") magnetic chuck. A lot of my knives are 50-60mm wide. This means I don't have to track the belt up and down for full coverage.

The components I sourced:

Magnets
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/15-...Rare-Earth-Neodymium-Magnets/32398053200.html

Linear stage sliding table
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Man...al-Linear-Translation-Stages/32612615636.html

Linear slide rail
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1pc...ulti-axis-core-linear-Motion/32842691822.html

Contact wheel
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/200...isher-Wheel-Sanding-Belt-Set/32381815454.html

Chuck and plates
The magnetic chuck is made from AW-2007 aluminium. The holding plate for the chuck and the mount plate for the slide rail is made from O1 tool steel.

The linear stage sliding table was a little less precise than I wanted. If I were to build it again I would probably get this one instead:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/GGP...4-Ball-Screw-Linear-Rail-CNC/32806395029.html

So I had to take it apart and lap the pieces for a tighter dovetail fit. I now have a runout of about 0.015mm (~0.0006") across the slide. And I decided to get a lot of magnets on the chuck since they're only 4mm. And it seem to have done the trick, the grip is fantastic.

I also put the two stops at the correct distance for quick and easy tapered tangs, just like Wuertz SGA.

And I decided to build the whole package on the same tooling arm for more rigidity.

Here are some pictures.

 

[Toni Oostendorp]

That is a really nice build!

 

[Ken H>]

You did really good with that build, and good with the photos. I especially like the contact wheel mounted to the tooling arm. Since I saw OBG's setup with his contact wheel mounted to contact arm I've been thinking about doing the same thing. BUT - I'd have to resurface my magnetic chuck. Due to the slop in the tool arm holders when my system is mounted the magnetic chuck wasn't exactly square to the contact wheel. Once I surfaced the magnetic chuck it's now square, but I'm not sure the "slop" will come out to exactly the same every time. I might just move my contact wheel to the tool arm like you've got. I do think that's best.

Again, GREAT JOB!

Ken H>