Surface Grinder Operation Tips

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Augus7us

Joined
Oct 9, 2014
Messages
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Alright guys I'm about to give my surface grinder her first go tomorrow and looking for some tips. Its a Covel 6x12, old American iron that I've went through and cleaned up and oiled. I've been reading up and watching videos on how to keep it from maiming me, but I welcome all the advice I can get. Its hard to get past the whole exploding wheel potential.

Couple of questions:

The wheel is a new Norton 32a46gvbep and it passed the ring test. After using it how frequently should I do the ring test?

When making the first pass how do you guys lower the stone into the material? Just gradually until you start seeing sparks then run it back and forth? I'm worried if there is a high spot in the material and I start it in a low spot.

I don't have a wheel balancer and I don't have 1 1/4" round stock or a lathe to make one at the moment. How important is this? How difficult are they to make without a lathe? I can get a piece of round in 1 1/4" but I have no idea if it will be true to the point of being useful in balancing the wheel. I have an extra arbor but its tapered and the testing rod I saw that fits was likely too expensive to justify.

Thanks All!

-Clint
 
*sigh* I tried to respond to you and once again BF crapped out and lost my reply.


Firstly, don't be afraid, the chances of wheel explosions are very low as long as you've ring tested the wheel, and don't do anything too crazy. As long as you don't drop the wheel, or smack it with something, you shouldn't have to check it again, although if you end up like me with lots of wheels laying around, I'd just check them before mounting.

You'll need to dress your wheel, but you don't need to balance it. I assume you have a diamond dresser? That's the first thing that must be done.


The wheel you have is a great all purpose wheel, for normal use, that's all you should need. Different dressing rates will allow you to hog or get a fine finish. I'd be happy to explain all this, but it'd be easier if you call me. I'm getting sick of typing this all out already. ;)



Buy a single point or multi point diamond, and make a holder if you don't already have one, it's very easy, I'm happy to explain in detail, but the shank of those dressers is tapered, so all you have to do is drill a hole in a chuck of metal and press it down in there. Buy a cheap single point off ebay. Shouldn't cost more than $20.




Once you're comfortable, you can typically turn on the spindle, and lower the wheel (slowly once you get close), until you just see sparks and then crank back up a few thou and start traversing. That's assuming fairly uniform stock. For stock that's not very uniform, I'd lower the spindle with the machine turned off, until the wheel just touches, then go back up a few thou, then by hand, move the X feed (table, back and forth) slowly. If you hear crunching or see the wheel moving, you need to go back up a few more thou. Ideally you want to be just barely passing the highest point, then turn on the spindle, and start feeding X.


Do you have auto feed in X or is this an all manual machine?

If you want to call me and I can discuss some finer points with you, let me know, and I'll PM you my number.
 
Thanks Javan this is great information and a lot of help to me. I went to the shop to fire it up but I realized the diamond I bought from Enco had an odd sized shank and I did not have the right size drill to make my dresser. Going to borrow one from my pops tomorrow and give it another shot.

I really appreciate the offer to chat about this and I will take you up on it, as long as you don't mind knife making banter ;) I can't PM but shoot me an email with a good time to call and I'll chat with you once I get the dresser finished so I can actually use the thing.

-Clint
 
You only need to sound the wheel once before mounting on the flange. Be sure there are paper gaskets between the wheel and the flange. You do need to balance the wheel on the flange (this is why wheel balancing tooling was invented), then you dress the wheel once it is mounted on the machine. You redress the wheel as needed during use.

You are wise to be very careful with a surface grinder. They are potentially very very dangerous. Particularly the older machines that lack a lot of the safety features on newer machines. Be sure your machine has a steel housing that surrounds most of the wheel.
 
Kevin, not to be contrary but I've never needed to balance a norton wheel, even up to 12x1" on my larger SG, and definitely never found it needed with good quality wheels on smaller SG's.


Yes it is optimal, but usually unnecessary, with quality, new stones. Unless he gets spindle vibration, which will be obvious, and find this to be mostly prevalent with stones of questionable origin.


Since he doesn't have a balancer, and no idea if he's got a balancing spindle adapter, lets not make it more complicated than it needs to be to get him started. If he has finish problems, or vibration, then we can fix it, but I'm betting he wont.
 
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