How Flat Is your Contact Wheel

[Dennis Paish]

Greetings,
How do you 'true' your contact wheel on a 3 wheel type grinder? How flat does it have to be?

Thanks for your comments.

 

[Fred.Rowe]

For the smaller wheels that are rubber coated, I remove them from the machine and true them in a mill. I have never trued a big wheel.

With the small wheels, what seems to happen is they wear differently across the surface, making the belts track off center which causes all kinds of problems.

 

[Drew Riley]

I have an 8" contact wheel from Beaumont Metal Works that came dead flat and square, but after much grinding on it, I've accidentally rounded one of the corners of it off a little bit.

Some guys purposefully radius the corners or convex their wheels a little bit in order to get a specific radius at their plunge lines. The more important issue is to make sure it's symmetrical, or your plungle lines/radiis won't be even on each side.