Quorn or Vertex cutter grinder ?

[TerrydParticipant @terryd72465]

Posted by chris j on 09/11/2012 15:50:54:

Posted by Terryd on 09/11/2012 14:58:54:

Hi Chris,

more food for thought, Harolds book is here for a good price (new). I have built the HH model and it is quite good but I intend to build the Brooks – Stent, which was serialised in MEW numbers 16 and 17 or thereabouts, as a project. There is a build here.

Terry

Thanks Terry

I did buy H's book actually.

I do want a cutter but not at any price though, a quorn just sold on eBay for £800 odd !!

Hi Chris,

The reason I am looking at the 'Brooks – Stent' is that it can be built from readily available stock materials so no expensive castings. I can add to the bits as I wish and when can afford to buy the odd esoteric materials such as precision ground bar. I suspect that my version will differ somewhat from the original though in the cause of economy.

Best regards

Terry

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

This is being posted with my workshop hat on and in no way a plug for ARC Euro trade as I don't see why I should when Hiawatha still has my two quid.

Firstly diamond wheels, the purists have always said that you don't grind HSS or normal steel on them as the carbon migrates into the diamond or visa versa and generally makes a dogs dinner of the wheel.

When they used to be £100 a pop I gladly believed this and only used mine for tungsten, since they have dropped in price to £4 17s and 8p sod it try it and treat it as a consumable.

To this end I have had one of ARC's on my Vertex for about 7 years and it still has life in it. In fact I'm waiting for it to pop it's clogs as i have bought two spares and the way it's going the local undertaker will be using them to grind the nails down on my custom engineers coffin.

This wheel has ground Tungsten, finger nails, HSS, fingers and even steel when it's got in the way. Now I'm not geared up to do a scientific examination but I assure you it removes fingerprints just as fast as it did when new.

Ipso facto, case rests.

Now a little tip, patent pending. Diamond wheels are fine for licking up, as regards removing stock they are useless. Green grit will remove stock but won't put a real fine edge on, plus they wear fast and create loads of dust.

I still use some large 3/4" shanked special shaped brazed carbide tooling, if this chips as it sometimes does you may have to remove 40 – 50 thou off the front or top face to clean up.

A green grit wheel will take about 10 minutes to do this at the cost of probably an 1/8" off the wheel.

However ARC sells some diamond faced wheels designed to fit angle grinders [ usual no connection – Ketan stick me another two freebies in the post for the plug – cough ]

If you fit one of these to a cheap angle grinder mounted on one of those cheap Lidl stands they make an ace grinder for ripping off tungsten.

The tool I mentioned earlier takes about 4 minutes to get a new face and the finish is enough that a 30 second lick on the diamond cup wheel is enough. Again life on these is very good and they are reversible.

John S.

[Mexican jonParticipant @mexicanjon]

I managed to pick a Quorn up a couple of years ago, It was in a second hand shop (from the estate of deceased engineer) £160 is all i paid for it as the shop keeper didn't have a clue what it was. My thinking was that'll get used loads, well it still sits in my tooling cupboard where i put it when i got home. The reason for this is as some others have said with indexable tooling and throw away tips and the general price of replacement cutters these days it's easier to just get new, and use the time it would have taken to sharpen the blunt tooling to carry on machining, building or reading the latest posts on the forum.

Regards Mex

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

This is the point that most tools only require a sharpening touch up, and John has stated his case for using coarser wheels for stock removal.

I have a lot of cutters that have have been misused and only needed a lip grind so I did not need a sophisticated Quorn only a small 4" Diamond wheel. This with a simple clamping and orientation table for depth and angle. Make jigs to suit your requirements as hand held grinding on a diamond wheel can be a bit difficult to maintain the original specs as a diamond wheel will take metal off as if it were butter!

The simpler the better, a head with a wheel mount ,a tilting table and a rotatable mounting device and away you go.

Reference to time grinding versus cost of tools is a bit dubious as an hours cutting on a sharpened tool can be worth 5 or 6 times the cost of a new one ! It is possible to recover damaged cutters just by lip grinding a few thou. off the lips. Enough to get you past the hold up.

Make your choice of a grinding machine or device and live with it as you may not use it often but you will have the facility if you need it.

Clive

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