Surface Grinder Initial Tooling

I just looked up your grinder on Grizzly site, did you get a magnetic chuck?

Yes, it came with the magnetic chuck. The people I bought I bought it from didn't use it though, they had their own jig and were using a homemade hub to mount a diamond, cone style disc. Maybe just to sharpen planer planes? The chuck is from down by the coast so its fairly rusty. I'll have to clean it up and grind it in.

I had found the hub via the parts list, Grizzly PN P3104035, shows at $50, but no drawing or picture available.

The hubs that mount to the grinding wheel should just mount directly to the spindle taper right? Would it be worth finding the appropriate one from wmsopko based on measurements of the spindle versus getting the Grizzly one?
 
The hubs that mount to the grinding wheel should just mount directly to the spindle taper right? Would it be worth finding the appropriate one from wmsopko based on measurements of the spindle versus getting the Grizzly one?
The "hubs" are properly called "adapters", and yes, they are the sole interface between wheel and spindle, at least on my grinder and others I have seen. Again, yours may be different, so I do not know for sure. The Grizzly site shows that your grinder uses 8" wheels with up to 3/4" thickness. I have seen advice to only use adapters with flanges at least 1/3 the diameter of the wheel for safety reasons. The 200 series adapters I am using on my grinder, which uses 7" wheels, and many, many others use as well, have 2 1/4" O.D flanges. That is a bit short of the 1/3 recommendation. Your grinder, using 8" wheels, may be better off with wider flange adapters. I am fairly new at this myself, and definitely do not know all the answers. Perhaps a real grinder hand could also speak up to help you here on H-M. The Sopko stuff is beautifully made, highly accurate, and priced to match. I have no experience with the Asian equivalents which are also available. I have been able to find the Sopko 200-1 adapters which fit my grinder for $50-55 new with careful searching around. The Asian ones do not seem to be much cheaper, and do not seem to have the washer with the notches in it which help to keep the flange from unscrewing. If your wheel turns clockwise as you face it, you need left hand adapters. I have one right hand adapter, which I only use with the notched washer that makes it more resistant to unscrewing, and I do not use it with normal wheels, only with special tooling that is not so much of a hazard. It might be worth it for you to buy one Grizzly adapter just to see what the maker of the machine thinks is appropriate, and to give you an actual adapter to measure.
 
Don't rush into grinding your chuck if you are new to surface grinding, its not an easy task. When you do grind it in I would highly recommend a open structure wheel, they look like swiss cheese but they sure cut cool and easy. Norton and Radiac both make them as well as no name USA manufacturers whose wheels show up on ebay from time to time. Check out Suburban's youtube video on chuck grinding before you start in on the project.

I would get the Grizzly hubs and save some money myself.
 
Ok, given all of that info I'll buy the stock adapter from Grizzly.

Doubleeboy - would an open structure wheel function well as a roughing wheel also in that case? I could get one open structure wheel, then a finer grit for finishing.
 
Don't rush into grinding your chuck if you are new to surface grinding, its not an easy task. When you do grind it in I would highly recommend a open structure wheel, they look like swiss cheese but they sure cut cool and easy. Norton and Radiac both make them as well as no name USA manufacturers whose wheels show up on ebay from time to time. Check out Suburban's youtube video on chuck grinding before you start in on the project.

I would get the Grizzly hubs and save some money myself.
Doubleeboy is correct. Grinding the chuck is probably the most difficult job you can do on a surface grinder if you want to get it right. It is also often done by a complete newbie. If you do not get it right, it will be a continuing nuisance and problem. Leave it alone for a while as you learn how the machine works and you get well practiced with some easy projects. Make sure you have coolant to grind the chuck. Use a coarse, soft, and open wheel like a 46H with an open structure and open dress to grind the chuck, and go easy at it. It will take a long time and it is easy to get in a hurry and botch the job. You will also want to check out the machine and get the geometry and the sliding surfaces in as good of shape as you can before grinding the chuck.

If the Grizzly hubs are $50, you can buy new Sopko high quality USA wheels for about that price or a little more if you look around carefully. I would certainly buy one of the Grizzly wheels just to see what is intended for the machine by the manufacturer.
 
I was really surprised that your Grizzly model didn't have auto reciprocation on the table given it's size and coolant capability. The coolant will help tremendously with grinding the chuck in vs the way I was taught in the dark ages. I (and the other grinder hands in the shop) always used Crisco on the chuck and a 46H wheel. It takes a long time to make a single pass on an 18" chuck by hand.
 
I actually need to replace the belt that drives the table also. The one grizzly sells is over $100, I was unable to find anything comparable. It looks like a standard timing belt but has a non standard length, width, and pitch. I have a couple extra steppers from my mills CNC conversion. I might eventually convert it over to an auto feed. Would just have to rigup an adapter to connect to the pulley and setup some limit switches.

I don't actually have the coolant tank or pump. It was probably misplaced by the previous owner(s) in the past. It does have all the splash covers and drains though, and an electrical bulkhead for running the pump. I might make a simple setup out of a 5 gallon bucket and harbor freight submersible pump.

I will definitely hold off on grinding the chuck. I will probably experiment with just getting good surface finish on some external rifle parts, stuff that isn't critical with regards to dimension/parallelism.
 
Be apprised that if you buy a pump and reservoir set up for flood coolant to stay far , far away from that $200 set up Grizzly sells, its near worthless for surface grinding, pump is weak, does not have adequate filters on it, the magnet that holds nozzle is a weak excuse. It will work but barely. I decided to save money when I bought my new Chevalier SP, the coolant was very expensive option. Live and learn, I spent 200 on the Grizzly and I would say its really made for a bench top mill or lathe, it does not have the oomph to pump up to SG when column is up high. So just incase you were going to go this way, take my experience as a caution. Flood coolant is great , but inadequate pressure makes the mess and hassle not work it. If you do go flood, take off your surround and remount it using lots of RTV sealant, the factory set ups do not come leak proof.

I agree with Holescreek about mist in the air, you can minimize it by making sure your coolant hits the surface of work infront of wheel, not hitting the spinning wheel, that alone will cut down mist dramatically, but to pull that off successfully you need to fiddle with your nozzle line on a regular basis with one hand and if you are really cooking on a manual machine both hands are pretty busy moving table and dropping the column. The Chevalier system I now have has two nozzles, I like to set them up so their spray stream crosses each other infront of wheel contact point, that does not always work pefect if you are advancing crossfeed for every longitudinal pass, but the surface usually stays flooded long enough to work, if not you can fiddle. If you look at Suburban's youtube videos they usually use mist for video demos, but....... they have world class ventilation system, both on the machine and whole room. I will be a happy camper when my grinding skills allow me to grind dry but for now to get the results I want I need to use coolant.

Please if you are new to grinding pay attention to safety , its easy to get hypnotized by the motion, and if you have a RPC or dust collection or coolant going it can get noisy. Pretty easy to think you have turned wheel off while infact you did not and its still spinning. I bumped my wheel thinking it was off, 5 months later I am still growing a nail back on one finger, I got off easy but the pain was off the charts for days I dont have first hand experience with the Grizzly but on my machine and a couple others I have been around you can barely tell they are on they are so quiet and smooth. Real easy to get a digit or two dinged up or worse.

Don't know what you have for phase converter or if you have 3 phase but if running on RPC try turning extra machines on when you want to get really good surface finish, it makes a substantial difference for me and my RPC is well balanced, wild leg is only off by a few volts.

cheers
michael
 
I have a new to me Boyar Shultz with one hub. Cheapest I have seen for new Sopko is Travers Tool, same price as used on ebay. I am waiting for a discount coupon to buy a few
 
I had trouble with Travers not standing by their web site pricing for the adapters. After I ordered some they told me the price was no longer valid and I needed to pay ~$10.00 more each. I argued back and forth and finally got them to split the difference. It was still cheaper than anybody else's price, so I took it. Still, irked me when they would not honor their current online published prices. I also watched for a while afterwards, and the price never changed on the web site. So, watch out for them... Their customer support, both by phone and by email, was also poor.
 
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