- Joined
- Aug 4, 2015
- Messages
- 291
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.
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.