Import Tool & Cutter Grinder

Honestly people don't tend to get them to begin with. Case in point is a Darex. A new Darex is 2300 bucks and then you add the needed attachments. These are in big shops with big budgets. Home shop guys don't get them. And a lot of big shops don't even bother with them. They either send stuff out to be sharpened or they toss it and get new. The other part of this is some of the high end CNC gear will sharpen their own tooling so it can keep track of it's size and stay in tolerance. Figure if your .5 end mill gets .003 ground off it in a CNC mill you are now out .006 in places If you are trying to hold .001 your are really screwed. So if the machine does it and then probes the freshly sharpened tool, then its knows about the .003 and adjusts for it. So there are fewer of these things even ending up in a shop.

As far as a beat and worn sharpener as opposed to a new import of questionable quality. One is about as good as the other in truth. tolerance on an air bearing is rather close for it to not have a ton of leak by. Now typically a spindex will have about as close tolerance as a cheap import air bearing. It will work but it 'consumes' a lot of air to work. But it can work if it's of any reasonable quality, and if you get a bit crazy and buy something like a spindex from Suburban Tool it's gonna be as tight as a good air bearing.

As far as rebuilding a used tool or remanufacturing a cheap tool the effort is going to be the same and the same tooling is gonna be required. Your finish bore for the air bearing will need ground at a tolerance of .00X and the inner tube will also need to be ground at .00X for it to be round and square enough to be as good as a Darex or other similar unit. the Quorn takes care of some of that in their manufacturing process and you will not need to be able to get that precise to assemble the casting kit. But you will need to bore it and hold reasonable tolerance to get it together and operating correctly.


I actually lucked into mine. I went and bought an ENCO import T&C grinder from a guy that had a Rochele (or something like that) end mill grinding fixture with an air bearing. He had a sharpening shop complete with optical comparators and high end ID and OD grinders and he gave me a hell of a deal on both of them... But these deals don't happen often and I actually paid less than half of what the fixture was really worth for it and the T&C grinder.

Now I will also mention about a Darex or other high dollar unit. You can buy HSS end mills at machinery auctions for less than a penny on the dollar. Buckets of the things sell for $50 or less. One of the things that we need to do as home shop hobby machinists is figure out a good way to finance the purchase of machines, tooling and materials to feed our hobby. My personal way is building RPC's but I could easily go get a couple buckets of end mills (I ahve a couple now hence the reason I bought the T&C grinder and fixture. You can sharpen them up and assemble sets and sell them on eBay to fund your purchases of tooling and such. Keep an eye on bidspotter.com for machinery auctions with pallets of used tooling. They are out there all the time and it's a quick way to generate funding.
 
I'll post this information for this types of cutter grinder. I have not used one of the chinese clones, but I have used Deckel's, Scripta's, Alexander's and Gorton's for more than 30 years. True you cannot sharpen the sides of a normal end mill but you can sharpen the ends of them, you can also put radii on the corners for making bullnose end mills.
You can make carbide spade drills of any size that will fit in the collet, you can make single lipped cutters with any form that you can imagine, trapezoidal, bullnose, ballnose and angles of any variety you want. You can make single side or 3 sided engraving tools. You can use them to custom size or to make a reamer.
They are extremely useful and anyone who tells you are they are not knows nothing about using them. In shops that do engraving or mold work they are indispensable.
I just stumbled onto a Scripta model about 3 weeks ago and bought it for $550, I have been wanting one of these for years but as said they are hard to find an tons of them have been scrapped because people were told they were useless.
 
I use mine.
As in any machining it is the set up with what's available in ones shop.
Imagination can produce the set up.:)
 
For about the same $1k price, you can probably find a Rockwell Delta Toolmaker and accessories (aux table, centers, univise). Might need some restoration, might get lucky and not, might take some time to find one. A Toolmaker is just that: it'll grind anything. Literally. And it's a 6x12 surface grinder as well. Check e-Bay, but prices for machine tools there are usually stupid high. There's a Yahoo group that sometimes has leads to used machines. It's all heavy old iron, indestructible and totally restorable, designed to be maintained and used in a small shop.

The Chinese stuff is a knock-off of the Quorn, for all practical purposes. Martin Model has castings, but it's months and months of effort plus cost of materials (say around $4-500).
 
I picked up a Pratt Whitney R8 Tool Cutter Grinder a couple weeks ago.
I've been using a Pratt Whitney R6 if anyone has interest. 120v & 1 phase. PW collets included.
The R6 is the same as the R8 with less travel.
The Cincy Monoset copied the PW design (depends on whose history book you read).
I haven't yet listed the R6 here or elsewhere as I wanted to get the R8 running first.
Note: with some money down and if you pay for fuel. Delivery might be an option. Palatalizing certainly is an option.

Daryl
MN
 
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I just picked up one of these import grinders and am in the process of tearing it down for a big clean up. I'll post after I get it back together & running. There is a great blog from a guy who bought one new and immediately tore it down and rebuilt it. I can't post links yet, but it's on the SCHSM website.
 
Like many items I've ended up with two Pratt Whitney Tool Cutter Grinders.
I'll be keeping the larger R8. However, I've got the little sister she is an R6 with OEM collets similar to the one in the attached pic. Good condition! Price is negotiable and fair.
Eventually, I'll get around to actually taking pics and posting it here. Likely not for a few months as I'll have more time to try to sell accumulating stuff come spring. Meanwhile she is kept warm and dry. If interested let me know. Delivery might be available this summer as she'd very easily fit in the bed of the pick up as the wife and I begin our summer camping travels. Or you could come here and spin the cranks.

Daryl
MN

Note: This pic is a copy/paste of one currently on ebay. This is not the machine in my garage....

r6.jpg
 
I just picked up one of these import grinders and am in the process of tearing it down for a big clean up. I'll post after I get it back together & running. There is a great blog from a guy who bought one new and immediately tore it down and rebuilt it. I can't post links yet, but it's on the SCHSM website.

Really looking forward to your inspect/rebuild findings & yes any other related links of interest. In the Stefan video I posted link, I thought he mentioned an actual improvement on import over the Deckel on the rotating bearing/bushing assembly? but I wasn't too clear on that detail. He made some other tweaks just to give you heads up.
 
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