Dressing a wheel?

[James04]

Hi,

I'm very new to all this and would like to know what is the best thing to use to dress my grinding wheels is. I purchased one of the old school wheel dressers that are like metal disks some with teeth and some with a smooth edge. Is this what I should use? I'v seen diamond dressers in the catalogs only they are a single point and am not sure how to use it to get a trued surface on the wheel. Do you just run it across the face by hand or is there some aditional tooling needed. Also for grinding HSS tool bits what type of stone/grit should I be using? I think my grinder came with one 60 and one 80 grit (Not sure.It's a Delta 6" from Lowes.). Anyway, any advise would be appreciated.

Thank's,
James

[Durkee]

The star dressers work quite well for trueing a bench wheel. A little trick I've learned to make it work just a bit better is to hold the dresser with the handle still in line with the wheel, but roll the handle slightly to the side so the stars are rolling a little diagonal to the wheel.

80 grit for 3/8" and under. 60 grit for the bigger drills.

[HuFlungDung]

In my opinion, the Star wheel dresser is best used to unclog a wheel that has ...... been clogged

A single point diamond will serve you well if you are careful not to grind the diamond mount. A wheel that gets a little out of balance due to heavy use can be restored to true running because the diamond will cut it. Use a tool rest to support the diamond. It cuts the stone easily, so you can afford to take light cuts, rolling it as you use it to keep the diamond wearing evenly.

If you want more accurate dressing, then rig up a swinging holder to sweep the diamond across the wheel, or use a natural axis of the machine to move the diamond to dress the wheel perfectly.

[mmorton9]

A single point diamond is usually mounted in a holder and run across the wheel. Either with an axis on the machine or in a dressing fixture. You can get what is called a cluster diamond and use it in a holder by hand. They come either in a round shape or in a rectangle. The star dressers work great for a bench grinder. I have found that when grinding offhand the wheel will run tru enough, but not if you are trying to grind something on a machine that requires any kind of finish. You can also get dressing stones from most industrial supply houses. MSC also has a stone that Norton puts out called a Norbide stick. If you practice with any of them you can get a pretty tru wheel. The Norbide is expensive but unless you drop them on concrete, etc., they will last forever. I have one that I have been using for ten years and it is hardly wore out. These would all apply to grit wheels. If you want to dress diamond or borazon that is a whole new story.
Mike

[cncorbust]

This question leads me to ask about dressing a diamond cup wheel. I have a Norton 3.5" diamond cup wheel, it appears to have at least 1/16" of diamond impregnated material still in place on the grinding face. This face has recently developed a "waffling" or rippled surface, undulation is in the order of 0.001 to 0.003". The uneven surface now sets up a vibration in some small diameter cutters. I would like to restore this wheel to normal. The wheel is used in a Taylor Hobson engraving cutter grinder, the bearings are good the speed is as set by the factory. Help!

Mike

[Mcgyver]

James, the dressing has been well covered, they other advice i'd add is toss out those awful grey wheels that come with it. They cut very slowly and clog quickly. A nice pink wheel will do you well - while they wear quickly they also cut quickly.

years ago as a newbie i built this multidirectional adjustable set of rests/tables for my bench grinder because the ones that come with it are mickey mouse. ten years later those fancy rest are never touched, grinding is done by hand, but they are just the thing to provide an edge and surface for wheel dressing! basically I made a holder for the diamond with an adjusting screw that will slide across the table and against edge.

[greg b]

Dear cncorbust the only thing i have used to dress a diamond wheel that is resin bonded, is a Agrade diamond mounted on a shaft but it has to be set up so that it can be accurately passed across the wheel,the method is the same as dressing a cylindrical grinding wheel or surface grinder good luck greg b

[Article99]

You can dress a diamond wheel quite well using a silicon carbide wheel.

[Nitec]

Dear CNCorbust,

If you have a fair amount of grit around from grinding, take a handfull and throw it on a mirror like suface. Put a little bit of water into it and place the wheel face down on it. Then rotate the wheel in a circular motion until the wheel has a sharp egde. If you don't have any grit around, you may be able to get some of a company that make diamomd wheels. It's all waste any way. I got a half a bucket which will probaly last a few years. It saves you alot of money also, as dressers don't come too cheap.

Nitec.

[CarbideBob]

CNCorbust,
Dressing a resin bond diamond cup wheel.
The correct way is with a Brake controlled truing device (ie:Norton) with a silicon carbide stone. Unfortunately these are about $500 new. The stone rotates at a fixed rpm and grinds the bond out from around the diamonds.

You can dress a diamond wheel with a piece of soft steel using it as you would a dressing diamond. Its slow but it works. Basically you're wearing the wheel down because the diamond doesn't like grinding soft steel. If you use this method you'll want to have a wheel stick to clean out the bond afterwards.

You can true up a front face using a piece of 80/120 grit wet sandpaper on a flat surface basically hand lapping the wheel as above.

Bob

[mmorton9]

One of the easiest ways is to use a brake dresser. If you start calling use machine dealers they almost always have tooling that came with used machines. I rercently bought a Norton Brake Dresser for 25.00. They can be rebuilt unless they are totally trashed. We turn the wheelhead 5 or 6 degrees and run the wheel on the dresser across it to restore the dish shape to a wheel. (11V9 shape). We have also found that SG wheels work pretty good. You just need to stick the diamond wheel to open up the grit. Any questions let me know.