| Gallery, Projects and General > How do I?? |
| Sharpening cutters |
| (1/2) > >> |
| 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 |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |