Sharpening cutters

[cidrontmg]

What do you fellows use for sharpening milling cutters (end mills, slot drills, Woodruff cutters, bullnoses, etc.)? Or do you just buy new ones when what you use gets dull? I can cope with lathe tools, and drills from some 5-6 mm up, finer drills I don´t usually even try sharpening freehand, and they´re not that cost-effective to sharpen anyway. But milling cutters seem rather expensive to just dump when dull, they could be resharpened many times over with right equipment.

The answer of course would be a tool & cutter grinder - except they´re WAY too expensive for occasional amateur use. E.g. Darex E-90: $2,924.95... And it won´t sharpen drills or lathe tools... Even the "UNIVERSAL TOOL & CUTTER GRINDER" from RDG, which is the cheapest new machine I´ve found, comes to £650 + shipping  - that buys a LOT of cutters/drills/lathe bits. Then there are the kits to build one, Kennett, Stent, Worden, Quorn, Tinker, Bonelle, etc. They might be a consideration, except the best (Quorn) would come close to £650 with shipping + extras it needs besides the castings, and the least desirable (Tinker) might be a waste of time. Not to mention the "waste of time" needed for building any of them - and the great risk (with my skills and patience) of botching the job beyond any possible recovery. Second hand industrial bench tool grinders also seem to fetch oodles of bids and exorbitant prices in ebay  (.co.uk or .de).
So, quite a Jeremiad. Any suggestions welcome.

[75Plus]

Most larger cities in the US has one of more vendors offering sharpening services. They regrind your tools for a fraction of the cost of new, top quality, tools.

Joe

[Rob.Wilson]

Hi cidrontmg

Have a look at this TCG ,,,,,,,, may be worth having ago at ,,,,,,,, its on my very very long build list


http://homepage.ntlworld.com/j.b.d.willis/A0%20Bonelle%20TCG%20drawings.pdf

Cheers Rob

[John Stevenson]

Allow me to present for your amusement and perusal the El Stevo Tool and Cutter grinder MK0.5.

Now please bear in mind that these two pictures are staged shots only outlying the principle and are not to be taken literally .




Basically you take one of those cheap Chinese X Y tables and into the vise you grip a form of tilting plate which is bolted to a 5C spin indexer.
Somehow and not shown is a base that holds the X Y table and a normal bench grinder without tool rests as they are not needed [ I did say it was a staged shot ]

The X movement gives the infeed, the Y movement gives the travel across the wheel, the tilt gives the correct angle and the 5C indexer gives holding and indexing capabilities.

Now this has been posted before on other forums to much mirth and merriment and piss taking but it works.
So far I know of three that have been built in a matter of a couple of evenings for little money given that some of the components may already be in the workshop.

John S.

[EDIT] Due to the state of the economy the two pictures have been reduced to one.

[Dean W]

The El Steve0 model #½ would probably do fine, and you can use the spindex for lots of things.
Or..

Maybe one of these things?






They use 5C collets.  I know they are available in Europe, but don't know the marketers there. 
They will only sharpen the end of the cutter.  They run from about $30-$90 here, depending on brand. 
Probably a similar amount after the exchange rate overseas. 

Dean

[Rob.Wilson]

Hi Lads

Nice idea John   its good to see those cross vices are good for some thing  

Dean, now why did you have to go and post that    ,, another tool to make  


In The Shop Wisdom of Philip Duclos,, pp 24 - 36. there is  a design for a  Floating End Mill Sharpener

Cheers Rob

[ieezitin]

Cidrontmg

This is a tricky problem to solve being that we are small time and cash is scarce in everyone’s pocket.

Spending a large sum on a dedicated machine that is limited makes  no sense to me, so I saw the problem this way, drills, they are easy to sharpen over ¼ and with patience keeping an eye on the second hand market quality sharpeners are available and one should be purchased when the right unit at the right price is found. I found a Lisle 91000 drill grinder at a flea market and paid $25.00 for it, the range is 1/8 - 1-¼ now its useless under ¼ but over that it is flawless and its easy to use.

End mills are tricky as you know, so I am looking for a nice surface grinder to add to the shop, my line of thought is this, making jigs and indexing jigs would not be that hard or time consuming to make, I would make them as needed and over time would get a full set, also you can grind your lathe tools in a flash, then you have a machine which is truly versatile.


I do not know your market in Portugal, I would assume its not that good for our line of interest so you are left with Ebay, but an investment in these two pieces of equipment would solve a lot of problems in your shop and paying the second hand market price for them would over time be a saver in time and money. For half the cost of a quality new tool grinder which is limited in use you get the drill grinder and a surface grinder which adds so many strings to your bow.

Hope this helps.                 Anthony.

[cidrontmg]

To/from John Stevenson: "Allow me to present for your amusement and perusal the El Stevo Tool and Cutter grinder MK0.5."
This rang a bell. Now wtf have I seen that thing before 
One LED goes blinking frantically - ARC Euro Trade!      http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalogue/Collets/5C-Fixtures
about halfway down the page, we have this, with this title
Stevenson's 5C Indexing Head with ER32 Nut and Adaptor
Might I be correct in assuming you are the instigator of said item appearing in that page?
I like the indexing head, especially because I already have a fair number of 5C collets. I like rather less the bench grinder, a dedicated grinding spindle, and a diamond disc, would be closer to ideal. And I like least the chinese X-Y table vise. I don´t know what TPI (mm) the screws are, but they don´t seem exactly micrometer quality.
Anyway, I´m going to trot along this path for a while, I ordered the Indexing head, should be here next week (unless there´s another volcanic eruption in Iceland again), and meanwhile I´ll do some ebaying about the grinding spindle/motor and a bit more sensitive X-Y table.
But I´m still open to any brilliant suggestions about getting my end mills sharpened 

[DICKEYBIRD]

I built a sharpener for endmill ends using a modded HF X/Y vise and a CDCO sharpening jig.  It works pretty well but the mess of AO wheel dressing has put it into storage until I can get a deal on a CBN wheel.  rather than re-post the details, here's a link to a thread about it over on the HSM board.

http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/showthread.php?t=28945&highlight=SHARPENER