Import Tool & Cutter Grinder

petertha

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Does anyone have a story or experience with the typical offshore tool & cutter grinders? Particularly the ebay /wholesaler Chinese clones of Taiwanese clones of what are probably today $6000 Deckel's or comparable vintage USA brands. I'm wondering if they just are rough around the corners but work OK with some TLC. Or if they are basically unsuitable basket cases & just not worth going down that path. Full disclosure: I am perfectly happy with my Taiwan lathe & mill. But I'm fearful of an out of balance vibrating craptrap for what these are intended for, more precision grinding of drills & endmills & such.

tool cutter grinder.jpg
 
Seems no one has an opinion on these grinders. I have no clue but have wondered the same thing. Might be no one has on which means you get one and let us know how it works......:rolleyes:
 
Worst case - if the price is good enough, consider them a kit. Figure out anything that can be improved and work out a way to improve it. If you were going to make one from scratch, you would need to make all the parts. If one or two parts need to be remade, you are still ahead of the game.
 
What Hawkeye said. My pistolsmith friend, who now owns a machine shop making parts for manufacturers, has one of these and he apparently uses the snot out of the thing. Yes there was some tuning/modifying involved, but so what? I'm seriously considering one now.
 
If you were going to make one from scratch, you would need to make all the parts. If one or two parts need to be remade, you are still ahead of the game.
That's my thinking too, hence the question. I'm not against making tools & there are some beautiful examples of ingenious T&C grinders out there. But on the reality side, a lot of machining time & materials purchased & I don't have a spare motor kicking around... all that adds up & these grinders have some funky geometry that would be a chunk of work to replicate in what are castings (particularly the swivel). then you have the feed dial & various other lead screw-like settings/dials/locks. Basically I want to use it for what its intended & get on with my projects.

OTOH, we are talking a grinder here. What scares me a bit is the horror stories where the guy spins up his HF-type bench grinder & discovers a 0.1" run-out wobble... which he traces back to not the wheel but a warped shaft & tuna can bearings. I guess that's the 'kit' purchasing gamble. I've tried to filter search on some of the obvious keywords like Taiwan or Vertex. Even U2 U3 (what I think are Vertex series) , but I think that designation is also cloned by the clones. Heck, they are even getting sneaky & incorporating words like Vertex like or Mitutoyo like so its a bit of minefield. I'll mull this over for a bit & if I make a leap, will report findings.

U2 clone
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/U2-Universal...995765?hash=item280229f435:g:LLwAAOSwBahVOFiz

Vertex
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Vertex-Grind...309771?hash=item2a54619d0b:g:ndEAAOSwMmBVpoyq

Deckel (seriiously, listing for what my car is worth)
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/LATE-MODEL-1...685307?hash=item3abe0de6fb:g:7tMAAOSwuAVWy4Sn
 
Interesting. After some more searching, I'm starting to get the distinct impression of 'one manufacturer, 10 paint color re-distributer' syndrome.
Here is a Grizzly
http://www.grizzly.com/products/Tool-and-Die-Grinder/G0687?utm_campaign=zPage&utm_source=grizzly.com

Distributer in Canada (complete with garage demo movie!) 1416 $C = ~1050$U
https://www.accusizetools.com/2301-...-grinder-with-standard-accessories-110v-60hz/

Typical of a whole bunch of ebay like this +/- various shipping costs
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/U2-Universal...995765?hash=item280229f435:g:LLwAAOSwBahVOFiz

I can definitely see myself using one of these, especially for many 1-off custom tools. The diamond wheels are actually pretty reasonable cost which brings up new possibilities of dressing carbides 7 similar.
 
These grinders are intended for sharpening single cutting edge engraving cutters with V type points and radius corners mainly and not particularly suited for end mill sharpening; my guess is that you would be disappointed with it's utility. A better investment would be an air bearing bench top endmill sharpener, like Darex. I had one in my shop and they are very simple to operate and have a large range of travel and capacity.
 
OK, here are some options depending on how well you are tooled up.
And a couple things you really what to look for in a grinder or grinder setup.

First thing that is about a must is it need to have 5C collets.
Reason is that they are more abundant and have other shapes besides round.
Something as silly as a 5/16 hunk of HSS for a cutter in a lathe can be set in a 5C collet and ALL the angles be set by the holder to do the grinding.
You can simply set them up for each cut and cut several and then move on the the next cut.

Now next question is do you have a surface grinder? If so you are farther ahead to grab a couple additional items and use the surface grinder an the grinder part. First thing to find is a bench mount air bearing end mill fixture that of course takes 5C collets. Second is a spin index. Now, a spin index of reasonable quality can possibly be modded to be an air bearing by drilling and tapping a hole for an air line. Most of them have some level of longitudinal movement and with a fabricated finger act as a reasonable end mill flute sharpener. Now if you go that route a sine plate would round out the requirements for end mills giving you the ability to grind the ends accurately. And of course a sine plate has other uses.

The next thing to develop is a spindle holder for supporting spindles to hold large milling cutters for use in a horizontal mill. This may be as simple as a second matching spin index with a dead center mounted in a 5C collet. This setup will accurately (remember we are doing this on a surface grinder) sharpen and resize reamers as well as do any and all sort of OD grinding. Because you have 3 axis on a surface grinder you cover all the bases and if you get creative, you can build a plate that holds the spin index units that will give you X axis angle adjustment to OD grind tapers.

Here's the thing with machining. There are always multiple ways of accomplishing a task. You have to think about what you have on the shelf before adding items to the shelf. In a professional machine shop there is a tool budget to purchase any and all sort of expensive devices that may never get used. I have been around more than a few shops that had a like new Darex sitting in the corner with dust all over it and the guys would just go grab a new end mill when the one they were using got dull. Drill bits are no different. I learned to sharpen drill bits by hand my freshman year of high school when they still had a shop class and vocational agriculture was MORE shop class. Of course now it's animal science and they learn about dirt and the mating habits of livestock and little else at least at the local high school. I hate this has happened as I learned 4 marketable trades in that class. Those being carpentry, welding, small engine repair and basic mechanics. But back to my point. Home shop guys don't have a big budget for Darex E90 grinders and purpose built T&C grinders. We have to figure out what we do have and put that to use to accomplish the task at hand. Sometimes there are options that we don't look at because we don't realize that the mechanics of two things are pretty much identical like a spindex and an air bearing based grinding fixture for end mills. Sure there are compromises with some of this stuff. But at least in my mind working it all out is half the fun.
 
Thanks for the input Keith. Nope. I do not have a surface grinder. That sure would be a nice shop addition. maybe one day! I have a bench grinder & lathe/toolpost grinder.

I've thought of different ways to reconfigure these existing machines into something that could profile special HSS cutters, sharpen drill bits, maybe even end mills (although that seems to be debatable as to how good or what kind of flutes etc.) It seems to me the magic is in the traversing assembly, not so much the grinding head. You need to be able to vary X, Y & Z and also facilitate a rotational component. I think that's the more expensive guts of the T&C grinders. I have seen some nice builds on this & other forums where people have ingeniously repurposed assemblies harvested from other applications like X,Y tables with fixtures. Or on the other extreme, scratch built / casting sets like a Quorn T&C. I suppose its like most things & boils down to personal decision - do you want to invest the time to make the machine and that provides satisfaction, or do you want to 'get' the machine & spend time making things from it. There is no right answer, just 'your' answer. :) When I look at those Asian units (which I think are largely based on Deckel's) there are a lot of castings, components, electrical, machined parts & maybe specialty spindle/bearings that would likely be hard to replicate from bar stock scrap for the selling price. I guess I just need to ask myself how often I would use it & for what purpose. Curious you don't see many used ones for sale that aren't beat to death. maybe the message there is when people get them they tend to keep them?
 
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