Bench Grinder Giving Off Bad Vibes...

Weldo

Weldo

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Hello all! I hope this is the right forum for this topic.

So I'm looking to get better at grinding HSS lathe tools. I've had a small Atlas lathe for years but so far I've only really been touching up the bits that I received with the machine.

I'm attempting to learn more about tool grinding but I'm having issues with my bench grinder, namely bad vibration. The grinder is an old Taiwanese "Panther King". I'm sure it's not the greatest but it runs smoothly and quietly with no wheels. Run out on the shafts is minimal if any at all. So I put some new white Norton wheels on it (6"x3/4") with the included blue plastic arbors and I can't get the wheels to run true.

I tried clocking the wheels differently, every 1/8 turn or so and there is an orientation that minimizes the side to side wobble but in that orientation the wheel lopes like a camshaft by more than 1/16".

I'm thinking that the loping must be due to either the wheels not being true or the slight bit of play in the blue plastic arbor stack. The side to side wobble is probably from the large washers that hold the wheels to the shaft. They are stamped as opposed to machined on this grinder.

Should I just install the wheels with the best side to side wobble I can find and then dress to true?

Any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks guys!
 
There have been several threads on this and my experience is its the wheels, and silly washers and probably not the grinder. I've got two Chinese made bench grinders and once I got the wheels running true then balanced all was good. You've got two choices, make some arbors on the lathe and a balancing fixture or like I did after trying that route and buying a Oneway kit off Amazon for around $80. The Oneway kit is high quality with arbors, washers with built in balancing ways and a balancing fixture. The kit fixed the wobble and balanced the wheel making them be able to be dressed properly. To me it was totally worth it after spending hours of messing with them only to have marginal success. YMMV.
 
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Sorry, I guess I should have searched first...:oops:

Thanks for the advice! I looked into the Oneway kit, it looks pretty awesome! I had no idea such a thing existed. I was afraid I'd just have to keep dressing and dressing and hopefully the wheels true up.
 
Weldo said:
Sorry, I guess I should have searched first...:oops:

Thanks for the advice! I looked into the Oneway kit, it looks pretty awesome! I had no idea such a thing existed. I was afraid I'd just have to keep dressing and dressing and hopefully the wheels true up.
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Get rid of the blue plastic 'adapters'. You're chasing your tail otherwise. At least that's been my experience with them.
Make up some nice proper one-piece adapters if you can. Then you stand half-a-chance of getting the wheels trued up.

I've made my out of delrin and aluminum. Those blue ones are not worth a tinker's dime.
 
No problem, sorry if you got the impression I was grumping. I have a tough time with almost all forums search engines and sometimes there is a derailment on a thread that has the info needed but was not part of the original. So a search won't find it. I found the Oneway kit after seeing a YouTube on how to balance a wheel on a surface grinder and it had that same kind of setup. So I wondered why there wasn't a set up like that and there it was. It can need a little tweeking to get it right but it's a good kit IMHO.
 
C-Bag said:
No problem, sorry if you got the impression I was grumping.
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Haha, no problem! It's my fault for being too impatient.

Yea I just watched a few videos on the kit and it seems really cool. I like that it sort of quantifies the process rather than me just guessing at orientations that appear to be close. I think I'll give it a try... when my credit card statement rolls over.
 
Weldo said:
Haha, no problem! It's my fault for being too impatient.

Yea I just watched a few videos on the kit and it seems really cool. I like that it sort of quantifies the process rather than me just guessing at orientations that appear to be close. I think I'll give it a try... when my credit card statement rolls over.
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I think the instructions are a little weak but I know through firsthand experience lots of folks don't look at them much less understand them. So I'm not sure I would have more detailed instructions.

One of the things that really helped was soaking the bearings for the balancer in like acetone or some kind of light solvent. It frees up the grease in them so they roll freely. It's also give it a good roll at first to make sure everything is free with the weights out just mounted in the adapter. Mark the heavy spot and do it a couple of times to make sure it comes back to the same spot. I had one wheel that was so out I had to add a small washer to the center weight. Once balanced then true and check balance again. Believe me mine was a mess and now it's smooth as glass none of the scary stuff of drilling into adapters or into the wheels like I've seen guys do.
 
You're welcome, it's what we do here. Good luck!
 
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