I am in TROUBLE!!!!!

[frosted flakes]

I picked up my SB 16"x8' yesterday, stayed up till 2am last night hooking up the vfd for it. Then it happened......I turned my first piece in it........now I'm screwed!

Now all I want to do is watch youtube videos and read forum after forum!

When does it slow down......I'm looking at $1200 bench grinders to make tools for the lathe! Which is something I need to research here for is a good reasonable priced bench grinder, the Baldor does make me drooooooooool:veryscared:



My new money pit!!!





What does this mean?

 

[Pat of TN]

My friend, you have contracted a terrible disease. It is called "hobby machining". There is no known certain cure - although in case studies, marriage seems to reduce symptoms in varying levels at roughly a 30% rate among patients.

I don't blame you one bit! I think it goes the same way for everyone - you get one piece of equipment, then you can't wait for another. It even happens to me on my extreme budget shop. I got my lathe for free; before long I had a couple hundred dollars in tooling, in addition to a cart to hold said tooling and shop-made holders to hold said tooling, taps and dies when I find them, a small 3" grinder, an arbor press... it goes on and on. In addition, I joined this place and several other machining sites, and watch Tubalcain every chance I get with high-speed internet!

I don't know if I'd drop over a grand on a bench grinder, though! Unless you're using $50 lathe tools on a $10K lathe.

 

[12bolts]

Have fun turning.
No need for a $k+ grinder for lathe tools. An 8" grinder with the appropriate wheel for your tools will do the job nicely.

cheers Phil

 

[Splat]

Welcome to the club! Luckily, there is no cure. BTW, you don't need anything more than a 6" bench grinder, though you may have to fab up better tables/rests for it. To get underway quickly you could buy pre-shaped HSS toolbits, go with a tangential toolholder (only one face needs grinding), or indexable toolbits with HSS inserts from AR Warner. You should get some time in trying to grind your own tools though. You never know when you'll have a job that requires some odd shaped toolbit.

 

[hvontres]

I concurr that this disease is incurable

As for a Bench grinder, I have one of these http://www.pennstateind.com/store/GRIND2X.html?prodpage=1GR with a Veritas rest on the white wheel. I originally got this setup for sharpening my woodworking tools, but it works pretty nice on HSS as well. One nice thing is that you can slow it down for those final passes and you don't have to worry about overheating the bits as much. I will probably make another rest similar to the Veritas for the course side, since the factory rest is all but useless for tool grinding.

 

[JimDawson]

Welcome to the club! Luckily, there is no cure. BTW, you don't need anything more than a 6" bench grinder, though you may have to fab up better tables/rests for it. To get underway quickly you could buy pre-shaped HSS toolbits, go with a tangential toolholder (only one face needs grinding), or indexable toolbits with HSS inserts from AR Warner. You should get some time in trying to grind your own tools though. You never know when you'll have a job that requires some odd shaped toolbit.

I don't think anyone starting out should use any insert or pre-shaped tool bits for at least 2 years. HHS blanks only. Learn to grind tool bits. Learn how and why they cut. Learn what shapes work best for certain jobs. Almost anyone can grind a useful tool bit from a blank in a few minutes.

If it doesn't cut the way you want it to, make a change and try again. What rake angles work best for what materials, how much nose radius is needed for the finish you want. The answers to these type of questions are being lost due to the pre-configured bits that are available.

In a production environment you have to use the pre-engineered tools to keep production levels up, but in the hobby shop you have time to experiment and learn.

 

[Don B]

I don't think anyone starting out should use any insert or pre-shaped tool bits for

I'll second what Jim says about HHS tooling, unless you have unlimited funds for holders and inserts for pre-engineered tooling you'll need to deal with HHS at some point, best to learn the basics of sharpening on your first simpler projects, as the projects become more complex and your machining skills increase so will your tool grinding skills.
As far as a grinder goes 6inch will do, personally I'd go with 8 inch and a balancing system, it's no fun chasing your grinder down the length of your bench trying to sharpen an HSS tool bit, have a look at these.
http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=49226&cat=1,43072
Theres no need to spend $1,200 on a grinder though, that should get you four 8 inch grinders.)

 

[chuckorlando]

I got a cheap old harbor freight 6in just to sharpen hhs tools. Works just fine.

 

[jererp]

This is probably just an asset ID tag for what ever company owned this machine at that time. Every piece of equipment that came into our manufacturing plant that was a durable asset got one of these brass tags.

 

[rafe]

Yeah, that one's a beaut....I have a SB a size smaller than that one and I'd say around the same vintage....And I would have to say that I am very happy with it ....Looks like you need to clean up that 4 jaw on the floor and get that one going ! I didn't have a 4 jaw with mine and got one and it's on most of the time now.
Get a regular grinder, good ones can be had very cheap at yard sales,craigslist etc. save your money for an old mill .............and such..................................... Good machine welcome to the SB club