Tool grinder rest

kvt

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Has anyone done a conversion of the Harold Hall advanced tool grinder rest, from MM to Inch, and done the drawings, I have a Xmas present of Harld Hall's Milling hand book, and was looking at making the tool rest but would like it in Inch vice MM, Or would someone who is good at drawing in fusion 360 want to convert them for me.
I have endmills that I think I need to sharpen. Just starting out on a larger mill, Was given some endmills with it and had a few but think may have dulled them.
Ken
 
If you just want to sharpen the ends of end mills, Harold has developed a great jig. This is the first one of his designs I made and I use it a LOT! It works awesome. He has plans on his website at http://homews.co.uk/page124.html and in one of his books. If you are not familiar with his site, it has a lot of info for hobby machinists. Since discovering his site I have purchased most of his books and have made several of his jigs / tools, including the end mill end sharpening fixture. I made mine to to hold R8 collets, since that is what I use on the mill. This fixture has been a life saver for me, since I seem to dull end mills so quickly.

If you have digital calipers and a DRO system on your mill, the only thing you really need to convert is the threading / drill bit sizes, ( unless you have metric taps, dies and drill bits ). That's what I did, using my cheapo IGauging DRO system and cheapo calipers that measure in either system, at the push of a button. I lay everything out in metric, according to his plans but drill and thread in SAE because I don't have a metric drill index.
 
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HBilly
Would you mind posting a few pics of your end mill grinding jig?
I have the same problem of dulling end mills. Still working on figuring out the speed and feed.
 
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Have the mill, have his book and site, But do not have a DRO system on my Mill, That was why I was wandering if someone had done them in inches. I have also though about doing the simple grinding rest with the endmill sharpening jig, but figured that if I am going to build one why not built the better one that can be used for more things. ken
 
HBilly
Would you mind posting a few pics of your end mill grinding jig?
I have the same problem of dulling end mills. Still working on figuring out the speed and feed.

Here you go.
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Here's a link to Harold's video, showing it in use.
Before I made this I was thinking it would cost me a fortune to keep buying end mills because they would get dull so quick.
 
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I ordered Harold’s book “Tool and Cutter Sharpening” from Amazon earlier this morning. This will be my next project. Thanks for the pics.
Merry Christmas
 
I ordered the milling for home machinists, was suposed to be updated for USA, got it yesterday evening. So far it just looks like the USA printed version. All the verbiage and measurements etc are from England, and mm. the only reason I did not go for the one that has the tool and cutter sharpening one with the basic rest in it was that I figured the advanced version would be better for use with more things.
although I like the use of the r8 collet system in the photo.
Ken
 
Ken, the R8 system is not what Harold uses. It was just my twist on his design, since I use R8 collets. I got the R8 specs from Machinery's Handbook.

While I just finished making Harold's simple grinding rest and have not yet used it, I agree with Ted. I think it will be much easier to set up the advanced rest and will likely make that some day. Depends on how much difficulty I have setting up the simpler one. Just from playing around with it I can see the challenge in trying to get all necessary angles set up at one time, by rotating around the ball, vs setting one angle and then the next.

Even though I now have his rest and his more complex end mill sharpening jig (the one that does the flutes as well as the ends) I will continue to use the above end mill sharpener for the doing the ends. It is set up all the time and very easy to use. It also does a great job IMHO. The above pics show the first wheel I had on the grinder. It was too coarse and I have now changed to a finer white wheel.

Merry Christmas
 
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