surface grinder uses

Surface grinders are handy for removing tooling marks from flat milled parts. They are also handy for, well, making a ground finish. With jigs, you can sharpen things with them. I use mine a fair amount. I make money with it, grinding valve plates from air compressors. Hasn't paid for itself yet, but the money flow is steady.

Grant Erw> i happened upon an old Brown & Sharpe #2 surface grinder. so what

And don't forget touching up vise jaws, the vise, finishing parallels, angle & sine plates, making locating pins, step drills, and sharpening end mills. Countersinks too, if you have the jig for them.

michael

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And -- with a couple of sine plates at right angles, you can sharpen HSS toolbits to precise angles. My primary operation for this was to make some HSS Acme threading bits -- since I was cutting a thread a bit larger than the biggest that my insert tooling will handle. (I actually used only one sine plate -- for the side relief angles, while holding the tool in a vise at the proper angle for the sides of the cutter by placing it on a thin 14-1/2 degree plate made with a smaller sine bar and the little shaper. I had to make two of these -- one from a 1/4" HSS toolbit for OD threads for a test piece, and the other, from

3/16" HSS toolbit stock, to be held in a boring bar for internal threading to produce the nut which I was making (for a friend's log splitter.) Of course, the thread was not one of the standard ones, so just buying a replacement nut was out of the question. :-)

So -- *I* would hold onto that surface grinder. If not, and if you are close to me, I would be interested in a larger one than my current one (4"x8") -- if I can make room in my shop for it. The little one is right for my original intended use, but there are things which require a slightly deeper throat -- such as using one of the end-mill sharpening fixtures with larger end mills.

Enjoy, DoN.