surface grinders

Don't know for consensus.

I have a little surface grinder and use it a lot. Need four precision spacers faced to 0.2500"? Grind 'em. Basically, I think "mill or turn to thousandths, grind to tenths."

The big deal buying used is spindle bearings. These are super super precision bearings that cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars. They gotta be *perfect*.

Electric chucks are better than manual.

Ball bearing ways are better than slideways.

Buy from a manufacturer that is still in business. I like K.O. Lee. A good friend bought new from Chevalier, he's happy too.

Hydraulic feeds are real real nice.

GWE

Charles..where are you located? Ive 2 Boyer Shultz grinders that are project machines..one needs spindle bearings and the other an infeed nut, that Id lelt go very very reasonably. Cheap as hell in fact

They both of course need a clean up and paint. Shrug. Either will clean up and be good machines.

Im near Bakersfield California.

gunner

"To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated." - Trefor Thomas

Thanks a bunch Gunner. I'm really interested, but living in Charlottesville, Virginia, I don't think it's possible because of the distance unless you've got a truck heading this way for some reason. Many thanks for your thoughts, however.

Charles Morrill

OK, I added some stuff and moved some text around -- then I saved this file, because "how to buy a little surface grinder" is actually a FAQ.

I have learned all of this by experience. None of what follows is from conjecture or from something I read. - GWE

The biggest deal buying used is spindle bearings. These are super precision bearings that cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars. They gotta be *perfect*.

Also very important is it should have the original 3-phase motor. If the motor's been replaced by e.g. a Dayton or Marathon, someone's trying to rip you off. Precision grinders need motors with precisely balanced armatures, period. And you don't buy those from Grainger or Harbor Freight for cheap, either.

It should also have all shields for the wheel and table.

It's nice if it still has the stops to limit travel.

Electric chucks are better than manual.

Ball bearing ways are better than slideways.

Hydraulic feeds are real real nice.

Flood coolant is real nice too but messy.

Buy from a manufacturer that is still in business. I like K.O. Lee. A good friend bought new from Chevalier, he's happy too.

It's real handy if the grinder uses standard wheel holders like those made by Sopko. A nice plus is if it comes with one or two Sopko wheel wrenches and real big plus if it comes with a balancing spindle and balancing ways -- little surface grinders do a lot better with a nicely balanced wheel.

One more thing, more of a user issue really. When you're using a small surface grinder be aware that your max. depth of cut is usually .0005" (half a thou) unless you are only feeding in a little bit. Also, go ahead and dress with a diamond to true the wheel but make sure you also have a dressing stone and give the just-trued surface a quick wipe, lingering a tad on the corners. And if you notice the wheel beginning to cut differently, STOP -- it's probably loading up. What can easily happen is it loads up, cuts warmer, more friction less cutting, it warms up from the friction MAKING THE WHEEL A LITTLE BIGGER -- I'm sure you can see this is a classical positive feedback situation. What happens is bad, no matter what it is. Hopefully you don't explode a wheel, and if you do, that's why it needs the shielding.

I'll toss in a very few extra comments, snipping what I am leaving uncommented on.

With one caveat. Consider the power source for the chuck. I have the smallest of the Sanford grinders (4x7" IIRC), and there is a warning to *not* use electromagnetic chucks and coolant at the same time. A very good reason for this is that the power to the chuck is derived from a minimal amount of circuitry inside the base of the machine (rectifier, capacitor, and resistor) with *no* isolation transformer -- so you could be connected to the power line through the coolant. *Not* a good idea.

And dangerous -- as above -- if the power supply does not include an isolation transformer -- and ideally it should be located behind the machine, not under it, where coolant can flow into the circuitry.

My Sanford may have been the last one to receive a replacement manual from the makers before they stopped communicating with the world. I don't know *why* they stopped -- owner died? Chapter 11? Lawsuits? Just tired of running the company? Does anyone know?

My Sanford uses smaller wheels -- 4" ones, so larger toolpost grinder wheels are probably the easiest ones to fit. You can make adaptor hubs for anything down to a 1/2" hole with a lathe. This one is a very simple mounting system.

Probably others should add their suggestions here. Harold Vrodos probably would be a primary source of information here.

Once it is all done, it needs to be put on a web page somewhere

-- one accessible to anyone, not ones requiring signing up to a service to access them, and the location added to Scott Logan's regular posting of FAQ links.

Enjoy, DoN.

Hear, hear. Yahoo groups *suck*.

, and the location added to Scott Logan's regular posting

Is anyone *ever* going to update the RCM FAQ, barely touched in 10 years?

It's because of the non-support for the FAQ that I did the 4x6 bandsaw FAQ

GWE

I think that nobody who follows the newsgroup is still in a position to edit it. It needs to be somebody with an account on that system, and write access to the anonymous ftp spool directory.

Does anyone know who *used* to maintain the FAQ there? Did he retire without appointing a successor, or did he die?

The archiving of the newsgroup there is running on autopilot, which is why a few years ago several copies of a then common newsgroup/email virus wound up in that archive. Not a problem for me (with a unix system), and probably would be caught by any modern anti-virus program (unless it is so old that they have fallen off the signature list), but there is nobody there to remove the files. (This means that all of the massively off-topic crap is in there, too. :-(

Good thing to do. Thanks, DoN.

It sounds like you don't need a wonderful machine, just a useable machine.. I own a Rockwell "toolmakers" grinder which can be used as a surface grinder or a tool/cutter grinder. Works well in my home shop and was easy to move to the basement.

I also played with a Boyer shultz at a local machinery dealer. Even though it looked a bit ratty, it ran well and left a nice finish. Probably better than my toolmakers grinder. I think the price was about 1k. My understanding is that it is a fairly easy machine to move too.

So if a manual machine will do what you need, it will be cheaper and easier to move. It is nice to have a machine with hydrolic power feed and coolent, but I suspect they will cost more and be more difficult to move. Also, will the machine be in a heated shop? If not, I bet that makes using coolent more difficult.

This would get shoehorned into my heated alcove at work, where the Emco Maximat is earning it's keep bailing our custom woodworking shop out the occaisional breakdown, hardware modification, etc. It doesn't really have to do anything other than run...all manual is fine. I recently read about building a simple grinder in one of Guy Lautard's Machinist's Bedside Readers but that version required the operator to manually feed the work under the wheel with bare hands on a granite surface plate. The grinding spindle is suspended above the work on a pedestal that's bolted through the granite. Though simple and elegant, it scares the living daylights out of me. The garden variety manual surface grinder seems a whole lot safer and would probably deliver nearly the same results. I should probably get down to Dempsey and Co. in Richmond to see what they've got. I know they've had simple surface grinders in the past.

Charles Morrill