New Grinder Attachments at the Bladeshow

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SirSpice

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So I went to the Bladeshow over the weekend and saw a couple of interesting new attachments. Burr King added a 90 degree rotating base attachment. It looks extremely robust, and it seems to fit the trend of 2x72 grinders that can be used horizontally.

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They've also added a surface grinder attachment, and they were showing it flattening a 3-4 foot bar. It can even move side to side with a push of a lever to accommodate bars that are wider then 2 inch. It might give the TW Surface Grinder some competition.

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Speaking of which. The Travis Wuertz booth was debuting their super-fan-cooled-rotary-platen-adjustable-grinding-jig thingy. This thing is amazing. It's a rotary platen that has a solid carbide platen behind the rubber belt. The platen gets air cooled with a fan that is rotated by the rubber belt itself. The work rest angle can be adjusted with a knob that sits under it. It comes with a jig that holds the knife at any angle you want for beveling. Through some kind of dark magic, this setup basically eliminates chatter from grinding. That means you can take a fully-hardened unbeveled knife from 60 grit to 9 micron in about 10 minutes. A few minutes on the buffer and you have a mirror finish. I should also note that the TW-90 is one of the quietest grinders I've ever heard.

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It can be mounted on the TW-90 (obviously), 1.5" arms (KMG, etc...), the Hardcore Grinder, etc.

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And you get all of this for the jaw-dropping, eye watering price of:

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(this is the show special, it'll retail for over $3000)

The theory behind it is that it vastly simplifies what is arguably the highest learning curve in knifemaking: grinding clean, precise, repeatable bevels in a timely fashion. The pricing is probably meant to reflect the amount of time saved on grinding and especially hand finishing.

Did anybody else see this at the show, what were your thoughts?
 
Got my email with introductory price this morning on the platen.. was hoping for, and expecting a lot less on price.. ganna have to see one in person and use it first now as its just too pricey to blind buy.

New surface grinder attachment seems interesting, but looks locked into the burr king grinder, which will limit its popularity if so.

Was hopin to see the new grinder from travis, but guess its not ready yet.
 
Man that thing is really cool. Travis's stuff always looks well thought out and useful, not to mention top shelf quality.

I'd love to know what a 2x8x.125 or whatever chunk of carbide costs :eek:
 
kuraki said:
Man that thing is really cool. Travis's stuff always looks well thought out and useful, not to mention top shelf quality.

I'd love to know what a 2x8x.125 or whatever chunk of carbide costs :eek:
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Yes, me to. Iwas just asking about this very thing not long ago, and the consensus was it would be good other than the price of the carbide.
 
Thanks for the information and the pictures. I have two TW-90's. They are fine machines.
 
The platen setup is pretty much Jerry Moen's invention. He's worked with TW and Hardcore on production as far as I know. I messed with the prototype in person at Jerry's shop a while back, and it's the real deal. IDK if it's worth a zillion dollars, but it certainly does work as advertised. The combo of rotary and carbide, with the tilting workrest and jig, does in fact deliver a superb finish quickly, straight off the belt.
 
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Very cool rotary platen attachment. Did they do temperature studies to measure how effective the cooling is?
 
I'm curious about that too. Like how it compares to a water cooled platen. Being self contained/driven is definitely a svelte design though.
 
Looks interesting.

I would have to see it in operation before I dropped $3k on one.
 
I like the idea, but it'd take a lot of convincing to get me to spend $3000 on that rather than sticking with cork belts (which work very well) and adding either a couple more grinders or a second mill to the shop....
 
Very slick.

Seems like the jig should have handles though.

Wonder if the platen itself can be angled as well?

I don't know if +-10 degrees of adjustment would be enough for some grinds.
 
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Impressive! Does the blade not get hot grinding? Is there no need to cool the blade in water during the grinding?
How wide a blade will the jig hold?
 
I can explain to you why this carbide platen setup "eliminates" chatter: The rubber backer cushions the belt and blends any problems. This can easily be accomplished by what some of us refer to as a "soft platen" and have been using for years, in much simpler fashion. You use either rubber belting, or extra firm industrial felt, and glue it to a flat platen, depending on whether you use rubber or felt you have to put a cover of a slicker material over it so the backs of belts can ride over it, there are a number of options for this.

As with everything, there are trade-offs however. This does make it much easier to get a smooth finish, however, if you use this while grinding at course grits for flat grinding, you wont have a remotely flat grind. It will produce a lightly convex grind. Most of the old pro's I know that utilize these only use them for finish work at higher grit. It's excellent for handle work, or making final passes for belt finishes at 400 and 800 grit, with a fresh belt, any tiny wobbles or facets will blend in a few passes while the belt is very sharp and leave a killer finish. More than a couple of passes however, and it gets tricky, you can wash out lines very fast in the plunge area, and if you aren't very careful put tiny dips at the spine mating area.

If you're putting hand-rubbed satin finishes on afterwards, you have to use a real soft rubber backer on your sanding sticks also, or you'll immediately notice how un-flat the surface is.

Whether this matters or not, is up to each maker to decide. If you've ever taken a flat ground blade off the belt grinder, and went to a disc grinder, you figure out very quickly how not-flat it is, using a soft platen from start to finish will make this 10x worse. Personally, I can't stand this, and I do a lot of things to make my bevels as persistently flat as possible, including full distal taper from plunge to tip, until they will ride a disc the entire length of the bevels, and using hard sanding sticks exclusively until the final passes of the final grit.

However, if you're putting a belt finish on, this will make life easier.


For production grinding I can see how this tool would be very valuable to certain outfits. On the other hand, I can easily see how this could be a crutch for beginners that keeps them from ever learning how to grind properly, yet makes them certain their results are exceptional, because they bought a very expensive tool that was supposed to compensate for that.
 
It's the same reason hollow grinders have used softer wheels for finish work forever also. Bear in mind though, that most of them that know what they're doing, use a hard wheel first, to establish good crisp lines, and get everything consistent, switching to the soft wheel for finishing.
 
That makes me think about using a soft backer on a large radius platen, and whether the radius of the platen would counter act the convexing of the backer material.
 
Couldn't agree with you more, Javan. If all you want to do is make knives, dandy. But holy cow will this restrict your abilities later...
 
kuraki said:
That makes me think about using a soft backer on a large radius platen, and whether the radius of the platen would counter act the convexing of the backer material.
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Problem is that with the soft backer it's not particularly consistent, it's very dependent on pressure, and orientation of the work piece. I'm guessing that's why they're including a grinding jig with this attachment. From my experience, I'd expect this setup to make it even harder for a beginner to not have a lot of problems at the spine and edge, because it's so unforgiving about engagement.

I had considered trying a soft platen for a radius platen for finish work (although I never got a radius platen), but my concern with it, is the friction. Those things already generate a ton of heat, the big issue with most soft platens is that you have to run them slowly, because you have a cushion of some type glued to a flat platen. Heat, tends to destroy adhesives.

I only run fine grit belts typically 220 or higher, at low speeds on mine, and I still have to replace the mylar cover (that allows the belt splices to ride over the rubber) pretty regularly because they wear out from heat and abrasion. That's why they're utilizing carbide and rubber for this, to avoid having a consumable and failure point. It makes sense.
 
This is very cool, but pretty costly :\
I posted an idea like this a while back, but involving a radiused platen. I wonder if he ever tried that.
That would be cool because it would give the effect of a really big wheel. :)
 
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