- Joined
- Oct 20, 2008
- Messages
- 5,547
I got a Pheer 427 belt grinder from Jose Navarro the other day. He sent it to me for reviews and extended testing. Here is what I have written so far about it.
Unpacking and first impressions:
It was dropped off by UPS in two boxes, one containing the grinder and drive, the other containing the motor. My first impression upon unpacking it was that Jose does a very good job of packing- everything was well surrounded by padding materials, taped up tight and filled with peanuts. The box appeared to have been well treated by UPS, but I think it would have taken considerable abuse to damage any of the contents.
Both the grinder and drive are open frame construction. I expected this, it's one of the ways that Jose is able to sell a variable grinder for under $1K. The motor will get blown out every day after work, and the drive will be in an enclosure to keep dust out. More on the drive later.
The Pheer's frame is good sized and overall fairly heavy. It looks pretty decent right out of the box. If you inspect it closer, you'll see things like painted over weld spatter here and there, and moving parts will scrape paint off of each other in places. Everything is well de-burred, not finished much above that. The paint is cool though, on mine it's a harlequin type color, green from one angle, purple from another.
The two things I looked at right away were the tracking adjustment and the wheels. This machine came with a platen attachment, so it includes two idler wheels, one tracking wheel, and the drive wheel. The platen and tracking wheels are identical cast aluminum, and the drive wheel is turned out of solid round aluminum. Overall they look very good- the idler wheels are bigger than you'll see most places. The wheels are pretty snugged to the bearings, they would coast when hand spun but not for long.
The drive wheel has a nice crown on it, and is turned to a decent finish. It appears to be press fit onto the motor shaft- the shaft key is taped to the top of the motor and is not used as part of the assembly. The tracking adjustment looked to be built OK, but for one detail that I made note of and will mention later.
The bigger box included instructions and a bag of screws. The instructions consisted of two pages with handwritten drawings and notes for setup of the grinder basic drive operation, and even grinder safety. (Don't operate under the influence.) The instructions seemed easy enough to follow if this was my first grinder alignment, and the wiring while indeed simple was also described adequately.
Setup:
The screws included are to screw the grinder and motor down to a bench top. Since I like to be able to move my grinders around independently of the bench, and since my available bench top was not as flat as I thought necessary, I opted to mount the grinder on a steel base plate.
I just so happened to have a piece of scrap 1/4" steel plate about 2' square. So, I first clamped the grinder and motor down to it with welding clamps, adjusted the placement a bit and spun the belt by hand. Once I had my alignment OK, I center punched for bolt holes and counter bored for bolt heads from the back. I bolted the grinder and motor to the base plate with 1/4"x20 bolts.
Now I turned to the electrical side of things. The drive sent with the Pheer is a sub-micro VFD similar to what I already use (TECO FM50) in size and type. It is however different enough that it took me a couple hours to figure out how to get it to run the motor. I had a forehead slap moment when I realized it's a 220 drive and I'd been giving it only 125V. After realizing this and hooking up another leg of power, I soon had it running nicely.
It's a "Vacon 10 Machinery" VFD. It seems pretty versatile and has a lot of customizable parameters. It's also pretty easy to just set up in a basic mode without fussing with setting every parameter possible.
Testing:
With the grinder fully operational, I set some more parameters on the drive, then ran the grinder up to 120 Hz with a belt on. At no point during the acceleration from about 5 to 120 Hz did the machine vibrate more than very slightly; it's very smooth. Belt tracking, while a bit difficult due to the Al/steel tracking point, was solid and did not wander. All of the rollers ran nice and true and smooth at top speed. It's quiet, too.
I had a brut-de-forge camp knife in the grinding room, cleaned up the bevels with 120 Blaze using the grinder at 60Hz. No problems there. Belt didn't wander in the plunge cut with pressure.
I added a DPST toggle switch to the main power line before the VFD for a master power switch. I tested further. I had a forged and profiled 4" hunter sitting around, made of 52100 steel. I threw a 50 Blaze on the Pheer and went at it at 120 Hz for roughing. I really leaned into the machine, trying to stall the belt, but couldn't do it. This is with the spring set on the lowest tension setting.
The only affect this had on the grinder was to swivel the platen slightly, so I snugged the platen-to-tooling-arm bolt down tighter, and it didn't happen again.
This hunter was only about 1.25" wide, so even full flat grinding it wouldn't compare to roughing a wider flat grind, such as a chef or cleaver blade. I'll be sure to try that soon. My conclusion for now: plenty of power, and solid for flat grinding.
The Pheer grinder I got did not include a contact wheel, but does accept a 1.5" tooling arm, so some of my attachment from my other tooling-arm grinder will work with it. The spacing is slightly different though, so I made a dedicated tooling arm with a 7" contact wheel for the Pheer.
The square tube used for the tooling receiver on the Pheer is a snug fit for 1.5" square bar- snug enough that I had to quickly sand some light surface rust off of the steel stock I used for the contact wheel arm. This is a good thing, the receiver is a fairly thin-walled tube but theres no play in the arm when locked down. The tooling arm on the platen attachment is solid 1.5 square aluminum and slides nicely in the receiver.
An item worth mentioning is that the platen height relative to the idler wheels is not adjustable as received. Since I have a mill it will be pretty easy for me to slot the platen mounting holes back to provide some adjustment; this could also be done with a bandsaw or even hacksaw if no mill is available. The platen height from the manufacturer is set correctly, however if one wanted to add a glass platen it would be necessary to adjust it farther in.
Conclusions:
Overall I rate this as a very functional grinder, easy to change tooling, no vibration to speak of, built minimally but adequately. I dont think it would limit anyones learning or ability as a first grinder, and even as the #3 variable 2x72 grinder in my shop, Im sure there will be many times when I use it for a full spectrum of work, from aggressive hogging to finishing swept plunges with 400 grit Gator belts. Its comfortable and smooth to work with.
I only had a couple of problems with it; a touch of weld spatter in a few places under the paint- not hard to knock off quickly after welding with a slag hammer. The other issue was in the tracking assembly. The end of the adjustment bolt only had about half contact with the bottom end of the aluminum tracking hinge plate. It made turning the adjustment knob with any tension on the belt tough, due to the stickiness of the aluminum. I'll be modifying this to increase contact with the end of the bolt. I don't know if this is a problem typical of all these grinders.
Its pretty much what it seemed to me to be at first when I saw these being sold- a grinder filling a previously neglected price range for its type; a combination of design features found in higher end grinders at a lower budget. Aesthetics are somewhat sidelined in favor of economy; performance is not.
Further notes on use:
Working with the Pheer, I used it to finish the handle on a chef knife I had on the bench. Normally my handle shaping style involves a lot of contact wheel work, but since the Pheer came with just the platen attachment, I used the platen and small slack belt section to shape and pre-polish the handle.
The tracking stayed true the entire time, and the only vibration or bump was caused by the belt splice with 60 grit AO. I switched to j-flex and it ran like silk, at about 50 Hz. The knife was an 8" chef with an integral dropped bolster (long heel) with a canvas micarta handle. I'd worry about the micarta dust as I don't yet have the drive enclosed, but I recently greatly improved my dust collection, so with the dust chute under the platen everything was nicely contained.
Again, the machine performs very well as a functional tool. The platen is pretty long, and the idler wheels are large, so the slack belt between the top of the platen and the top wheel is fairly minimal, but can be used to good effect. The left side of the platen, as with most machines except the KMG style deep cutout platen, is a bit hard to work around- i.e., right angle workpieces can only be worked in a limited fashion on this side. Still, it's not as bulky here as a Hardcore or even a Burr King 960.
There have been some good reviews of these already written, just thought I'd add to the growing knowledge of it out there, and try to cover a new base or two with my description. Hope it helps inform grinder buyers.
Unpacking and first impressions:
It was dropped off by UPS in two boxes, one containing the grinder and drive, the other containing the motor. My first impression upon unpacking it was that Jose does a very good job of packing- everything was well surrounded by padding materials, taped up tight and filled with peanuts. The box appeared to have been well treated by UPS, but I think it would have taken considerable abuse to damage any of the contents.
Both the grinder and drive are open frame construction. I expected this, it's one of the ways that Jose is able to sell a variable grinder for under $1K. The motor will get blown out every day after work, and the drive will be in an enclosure to keep dust out. More on the drive later.
The Pheer's frame is good sized and overall fairly heavy. It looks pretty decent right out of the box. If you inspect it closer, you'll see things like painted over weld spatter here and there, and moving parts will scrape paint off of each other in places. Everything is well de-burred, not finished much above that. The paint is cool though, on mine it's a harlequin type color, green from one angle, purple from another.
The two things I looked at right away were the tracking adjustment and the wheels. This machine came with a platen attachment, so it includes two idler wheels, one tracking wheel, and the drive wheel. The platen and tracking wheels are identical cast aluminum, and the drive wheel is turned out of solid round aluminum. Overall they look very good- the idler wheels are bigger than you'll see most places. The wheels are pretty snugged to the bearings, they would coast when hand spun but not for long.
The drive wheel has a nice crown on it, and is turned to a decent finish. It appears to be press fit onto the motor shaft- the shaft key is taped to the top of the motor and is not used as part of the assembly. The tracking adjustment looked to be built OK, but for one detail that I made note of and will mention later.
The bigger box included instructions and a bag of screws. The instructions consisted of two pages with handwritten drawings and notes for setup of the grinder basic drive operation, and even grinder safety. (Don't operate under the influence.) The instructions seemed easy enough to follow if this was my first grinder alignment, and the wiring while indeed simple was also described adequately.
Setup:
The screws included are to screw the grinder and motor down to a bench top. Since I like to be able to move my grinders around independently of the bench, and since my available bench top was not as flat as I thought necessary, I opted to mount the grinder on a steel base plate.
I just so happened to have a piece of scrap 1/4" steel plate about 2' square. So, I first clamped the grinder and motor down to it with welding clamps, adjusted the placement a bit and spun the belt by hand. Once I had my alignment OK, I center punched for bolt holes and counter bored for bolt heads from the back. I bolted the grinder and motor to the base plate with 1/4"x20 bolts.
Now I turned to the electrical side of things. The drive sent with the Pheer is a sub-micro VFD similar to what I already use (TECO FM50) in size and type. It is however different enough that it took me a couple hours to figure out how to get it to run the motor. I had a forehead slap moment when I realized it's a 220 drive and I'd been giving it only 125V. After realizing this and hooking up another leg of power, I soon had it running nicely.
It's a "Vacon 10 Machinery" VFD. It seems pretty versatile and has a lot of customizable parameters. It's also pretty easy to just set up in a basic mode without fussing with setting every parameter possible.
Testing:
With the grinder fully operational, I set some more parameters on the drive, then ran the grinder up to 120 Hz with a belt on. At no point during the acceleration from about 5 to 120 Hz did the machine vibrate more than very slightly; it's very smooth. Belt tracking, while a bit difficult due to the Al/steel tracking point, was solid and did not wander. All of the rollers ran nice and true and smooth at top speed. It's quiet, too.
I had a brut-de-forge camp knife in the grinding room, cleaned up the bevels with 120 Blaze using the grinder at 60Hz. No problems there. Belt didn't wander in the plunge cut with pressure.
I added a DPST toggle switch to the main power line before the VFD for a master power switch. I tested further. I had a forged and profiled 4" hunter sitting around, made of 52100 steel. I threw a 50 Blaze on the Pheer and went at it at 120 Hz for roughing. I really leaned into the machine, trying to stall the belt, but couldn't do it. This is with the spring set on the lowest tension setting.
The only affect this had on the grinder was to swivel the platen slightly, so I snugged the platen-to-tooling-arm bolt down tighter, and it didn't happen again.
This hunter was only about 1.25" wide, so even full flat grinding it wouldn't compare to roughing a wider flat grind, such as a chef or cleaver blade. I'll be sure to try that soon. My conclusion for now: plenty of power, and solid for flat grinding.
The Pheer grinder I got did not include a contact wheel, but does accept a 1.5" tooling arm, so some of my attachment from my other tooling-arm grinder will work with it. The spacing is slightly different though, so I made a dedicated tooling arm with a 7" contact wheel for the Pheer.
The square tube used for the tooling receiver on the Pheer is a snug fit for 1.5" square bar- snug enough that I had to quickly sand some light surface rust off of the steel stock I used for the contact wheel arm. This is a good thing, the receiver is a fairly thin-walled tube but theres no play in the arm when locked down. The tooling arm on the platen attachment is solid 1.5 square aluminum and slides nicely in the receiver.
An item worth mentioning is that the platen height relative to the idler wheels is not adjustable as received. Since I have a mill it will be pretty easy for me to slot the platen mounting holes back to provide some adjustment; this could also be done with a bandsaw or even hacksaw if no mill is available. The platen height from the manufacturer is set correctly, however if one wanted to add a glass platen it would be necessary to adjust it farther in.
Conclusions:
Overall I rate this as a very functional grinder, easy to change tooling, no vibration to speak of, built minimally but adequately. I dont think it would limit anyones learning or ability as a first grinder, and even as the #3 variable 2x72 grinder in my shop, Im sure there will be many times when I use it for a full spectrum of work, from aggressive hogging to finishing swept plunges with 400 grit Gator belts. Its comfortable and smooth to work with.
I only had a couple of problems with it; a touch of weld spatter in a few places under the paint- not hard to knock off quickly after welding with a slag hammer. The other issue was in the tracking assembly. The end of the adjustment bolt only had about half contact with the bottom end of the aluminum tracking hinge plate. It made turning the adjustment knob with any tension on the belt tough, due to the stickiness of the aluminum. I'll be modifying this to increase contact with the end of the bolt. I don't know if this is a problem typical of all these grinders.
Its pretty much what it seemed to me to be at first when I saw these being sold- a grinder filling a previously neglected price range for its type; a combination of design features found in higher end grinders at a lower budget. Aesthetics are somewhat sidelined in favor of economy; performance is not.
Further notes on use:
Working with the Pheer, I used it to finish the handle on a chef knife I had on the bench. Normally my handle shaping style involves a lot of contact wheel work, but since the Pheer came with just the platen attachment, I used the platen and small slack belt section to shape and pre-polish the handle.
The tracking stayed true the entire time, and the only vibration or bump was caused by the belt splice with 60 grit AO. I switched to j-flex and it ran like silk, at about 50 Hz. The knife was an 8" chef with an integral dropped bolster (long heel) with a canvas micarta handle. I'd worry about the micarta dust as I don't yet have the drive enclosed, but I recently greatly improved my dust collection, so with the dust chute under the platen everything was nicely contained.
Again, the machine performs very well as a functional tool. The platen is pretty long, and the idler wheels are large, so the slack belt between the top of the platen and the top wheel is fairly minimal, but can be used to good effect. The left side of the platen, as with most machines except the KMG style deep cutout platen, is a bit hard to work around- i.e., right angle workpieces can only be worked in a limited fashion on this side. Still, it's not as bulky here as a Hardcore or even a Burr King 960.
There have been some good reviews of these already written, just thought I'd add to the growing knowledge of it out there, and try to cover a new base or two with my description. Hope it helps inform grinder buyers.
