Bench Grinder Giving Off Bad Vibes...

If you have a lathe you can easily make yourself bushings for the wheels. If the shaft is not centered well dont dress the wheels as you will mess up the weight distribution by making the wheel itself eccentric.
Step 1
Center the shaft in the wheel with a bushing to minimize eccentricity and wobble.
Step 2
balance the wheel
Step 3
Mount and dress the wheel.

I made my own bushings and mounting washers out of aluminum and my grinder runs very smoothly now.
 
Why am I not having bad issues on my grinders? I've been doing for years: step 1. Do use the crappy blue bushings, 2. Dress the wheel thoroughly, 3. grind things. It's kind of weird, it just works. Is there something I'm doing wrong that is resulting in consistently good balancing, because I think I should have one grinder doing the jitterbug and the other doing the hokey-pokey across the concrete.
 
pontiac428 said:
Why am I not having bad issues on my grinders? I've been doing for years: step 1. Do use the crappy blue bushings, 2. Dress the wheel thoroughly, 3. grind things. It's kind of weird, it just works. Is there something I'm doing wrong that is resulting in consistently good balancing, because I think I should have one grinder doing the jitterbug and the other doing the hokey-pokey across the concrete.
Click to expand...

Good wheels, Good grinder, heavy flanges, well made 'crappy blue bushings'? Count your blessings. :grin:
Can you swing by sometime and take a look at my 7"er?
I know that when I took the time to replace the blues, the jitterbug went away.
 
The answer might be in the first post. I got new white and blue Nortton wheels and put on an OLD craftsman grinder. It used to sit there and purr. With the new wheels. it tried to run off the bench. I thought they were going to fly apart. Got a $3 dollar flat wheel dresser and just touched the wheels and all is OK. Have not built the wheel balancer yet, all the parts are there, but dressing fixed mine so the balancer can wait until a rainy day.
 
pontiac428 said:
Why am I not having bad issues on my grinders? I've been doing for years: step 1. Do use the crappy blue bushings, 2. Dress the wheel thoroughly, 3. grind things. It's kind of weird, it just works. Is there something I'm doing wrong that is resulting in consistently good balancing, because I think I should have one grinder doing the jitterbug and the other doing the hokey-pokey across the concrete.
Click to expand...

I used to do exactly the same thing. I had a 8" HF bench grinder that was a beast and it never gave me grief and was smooth. After 30yrs one day it let the smoke out and I thought I'd buy a "good" grinder and got a 8" Ryobi and it shook everything off my work station and scared me half to death. Took it back got a different grinder, same thing. Trying to dress the wheels made it worse! So I went down and bought a supposedly good set of Norton wheels and not a lick of improvement. Made my own adapters which got rid of the wobble. Mounted them in my mill and used valve seat stone diamond facer to true the wheels. NO JOY! Even though there was no wobble and the surface was true at 3800rpm it made my workstation howl like Stuka in a full dive! I'd spent days messing with this and was thwarted at every turn and in 40yrs of being around bench grinders had never encountered this. But I looking on the net and on this site I'm not the only one. I'm proud for you that this has not happened to you as I'd not even wish this on my worst enemy. To each his own and I have no financial interest in Oneway but bless their pea pickin hearts I wish I did.
 
This is a sore subject for me. I have tried to find quality wheels.
Norton seems to be everywhere, I don't know if they changed their production process but every new Norton wheel I have is way out of balance even after dressing.
The Oneway helps but it's expensive to buy an adapter for every wheel/grinder.
I wonder if the 6" wheels are better? All mine are 8" x 5/8"
 
GrayTech said:
If you have a lathe you can easily make yourself bushings for the wheels. If the shaft is not centered well dont dress the wheels as you will mess up the weight distribution by making the wheel itself eccentric.
Click to expand...

To be honest I tried this before making this post! Here's a run down on what I tried...

1- Bought good name brand wheels, brand new Nortons from SharpeningSupplies.com here

2 - Checked run out on grinder shafts. It was very good.

3 - Tried truing up the arbor washers that clamp the wheel since they're only stamped steel. I made an arbor for the lathe and took a facing cut on each side of each washer.

4 - Tried dressing the wheels freehand.

5 - Tried constructing a "field expedient" dressing guide out of aluminum blocks and angles. The idea was to mimic the precise cross travel of a surface grinder style single point dresser. Clamped everything down as parallel as I could then slid the dresser, clamped to a block, across the wheel in a very controlled fashion until it took a cut across the entire wheel.

6 - Attempted to make a closer tolerance bushing on the lathe. The grinder shafts measured about 0.499" or 0.4995". I can't make an ID that accurate with the tools I have. I have no reamers or boring bar that small. The bushing I made ended up about the same or a bit worse than the blue plastic bushings!

7 - Tried mounting the wheels in the lathe on a custom arbor and using the compound to dress the wheels, holding the dresser in an AXA toolholder.

None of this worked out for me. I am not very experienced with machine work and am mostly self taught so it's very possible that bad practices and poorly made arbors account for my failures. Also as stated by GrayTech, it's likely that I just made the wheels worse each time I tried dressing them.

In any case, it seems like the Oneway kit addresses many of the issues I've experienced. It replaces my stamped steel washers and the plastic bushings with nicely machined parts, and gives me a closely controlled method for balancing the wheel. All this gives me good hope for success. It is kinda pricey but I don't really know what else to try.
 
So, bearings, shaft, spacers, flanges, or wheels... more than likely possibly the wheels.
While it would be nice to whip out the check book and purchase the OneWay system, that's not a really a budget friendly solution.

Here's another thread on the subject here @H-M:
I like @HBilly1022 's solution in post #15.
www.hobby-machinist.com

Bench Grinder run-out

How bad did I mess up here? I bought a Harbor freight 8" grinder, after Christmas ,and didn't open it until today since I just got my white wheel and a stand for it. Turns out there's a significant amount of sideways wobble in the wheels, and of course, the receipt is no where to be found. The...
www.hobby-machinist.com www.hobby-machinist.com


I ran across this site, and the first static balancer shown using parallels and the lathe bed intrigues me.
www.forturetools.com

How to make Static balance of the grinding wheel - Forture Tools

How to make Static balance of the grinding wheel?
www.forturetools.com www.forturetools.com
 
So I decided to pop on the Oneway balancing kit. I found a place online form Canada that has it for a pretty good price since the exchange rate is currently favorable to the US.

Oneway 2524

Even with shipping from our "Neighborinos to the North" it was a solid deal.
 
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