Friday, June 14, 2013

Dressing a Grinding Wheel

Hi Everyone,

Ok, let's see a show of hands-how many of you have ever dressed a grinding wheel? Not many?

Here's how's it's done or at least this is how I did it:

I use my grinding wheel as much as I use my lathe, or in other words, constantly. And the grinding surface had developed some deep grooves in it and it needed to be flattened out.

So I bought a wheel dresser:


It kind of looks like an old-fashioned safety razor and is just about the same size. The head of the dresser is embedded with industrial diamonds and it's the diamonds that grind away at the surface of the wheel and flatten it.

The process is fairly simple-you turn on the grinder and firmly push the surface of the dresser into the wheel as it spins and then gently move it back and forth until the surface of the wheel is flat and square to the sides:



Viola! You're done!

Now, I was so jazzed about the grinding wheel thing that I decided to begin working on Leon's tea box which I'll do over the next several postings as it was a long, nerve wracking process.

See you in the post,
VW

2 comments:

  1. Freedom for small workpieces in grinding wheels , with this wheel for processing, is a better choice, such as punch machine wheel. Because these are small grinding machining accuracy requirements are not very high, but not often wheel dressing, and corundum grinding wheel and a good self-sharpening cutting just apply.

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  2. Dear David,
    Thanks for your comment. I've seen grinding wheels such as the one your describe here in the US and Wood Turning On Line just featured an article about them. Unfortunately they are quite expensive here. One of these days I may get one but I'll probably have to sell a lot of bowls in the meantime!
    Thanks,
    VW

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