Pencil grinders

[J Solinger]

I was wondering if anyone has tried one of the air powered pencil grinders for a light engraving and routing spindle?

[Oldmanandhistoy]

Hi,

For the want of a better reply which does not seem to be coming.

I myself have not had any experience with a pencil grinder, but I am sure I have seen the subject discussed else where and am pretty sure the idea was working for some one else but don’t take my word for it.

Hopefully some one with some experience will jump in here, but if not and it would not course you too much effort give it a go, it will at least be worth the learning experience and may be you could help some one else with the subject in the future. Some one has to be the first.

One other thing, is anybody else having problems posting quick replies?

John

[J Solinger]

I've done some searching through out the forum and they come up here and there but I haven't found any report as to the performance. Common sense tells me it will depend alot on the quality of the pencil grinder, bearings and such. It will be some time before I get that far but I'm planning on trying one.

[BobWarfield]

I have one of the Asian import air-powered pencil grinders. It is wonderfully compact, but seems gutless compared to a Dremel or regular sized air grinder. YMMV.

Best,

BW

[2muchstuff]

I'll agree that they are compact and spin fast but they do not have the torque needed to get the job done. If you are in no particular hurry cutting parts out then they are ok. As an example a dental high speed handpiece, the drill, will spin up to 400,000 rpm under no load but as soon as you load it down the rpm's will fall to about 50,000. Dentists over the years have been switching over to electric handpieces because they have the torque to get the job done quickly. Time is money, get in there and hog it out.

[Greolt]

Sherline do one as an accessory.

http://www.sherline.com/8900pg.htm

[BobWarfield]

Originally Posted by Greolt Sherline do one as an accessory. http://www.sherline.com/8900pg.htm

Yep, looks like the exact model air grinder I have. Totally gutless. I wouldn't try to use it for anything more than engraving.

Best,

BW

[J Solinger]

Hopefully it won't be too wimpy. Another thought was to use a Foredom type hand piece with a cable drive. We will see what happens.