Wheel dressing techique help request

I recently bought my first surface grinder (Chevalier 618SP). I have limited experience with grinding before this purchase. Machine is new, seems tight, no problems. The manual mentions a wheel dressing technique that I find odd and have never heard of, maybe some of the experienced grinder hands here could comment if they care to.

What Chevalier states is 1. Due to the hardness and brittleness of the diamond do not dress the wheel too deep at one time. The correct way to dress the wheel is start from the center of wheel.

2. The dressing amount for rough dressing is from .004" to .008" Fine dressing is .0002" to .0004"


I have seen a few experienced hands dress a wheel, I have never seen them start the pass from middle of wheel, always come in from one side or the other, am I missing something here? I also wonder about taking 4 to 8 thou at a pass for a roughing dress, seems a bit heavy to me.

I sure appreciate any advise
Michael

Don Bailey from Suburban tool has a good video on wheel dressing. I'd check it out.

Not that this is the case but sometimes manuals that have bee translated from the OEM culture/tongue to another language are lacking or misleading. Check out the video mentioned, it's reliable enough info to get you started. I don't rough at .008 per pass on a surface grinder either.

Due to wheel wear, the center of the wheel is likely the largest diameter so you should touch off there. Second Baily's videos.

Dave

you dress from the middle because as the wheel has been working it wears from the edges towards the middle with each change of direction so the face ends up with a small curve to it.
If you take too deep a cut with diamond you could over heat the stone and damage it.

I normally will infeed .001-.002, unless you like to burn your diamonds up.

The speed at which you traverse across the diamond will determine coarse or finish pass.

Cash, how often on a big Mattison or Blanchard do you re-dress the wheel? Curious if segmented wheels require less dressing than others?

Lucky7

Thank you all for the help. I have changed my technique and am getting good roughing dress using .001 to .002" and finishing dress at .0002" I am getting good finishes in tool steel. As my wheels are 7 and 8 inch I have chosen to not balance them and have taken the weights off the two hubs I have as per Chevalier's directions if not going to balance. It seems to me that on a half inch or quarter inch wheel the balance is only off by a gram or two, I can tell no difference in surface finish or how unbelievably quiet the machine is if wheel is balanced or not. Maybe if I notice chatter I will change my mind or when using 1" wheel but on the thinner wheels I can see no improvement in balancing.

Thank you again for your input
Michael

lucky7 said:

Cash, how often on a big Mattison or Blanchard do you re-dress the wheel? Curious if segmented wheels require less dressing than others?

Lucky7

Click to expand...

this totally depends on what you are grinding and tolerances you need to hold. I have been in some shops where the wheel dresser on a blanchard is either gone or totally froze up. In our shop some of the blanchards we don't use often but on our 84" the operator is using it all the time for finish and sometimes when going thru the scale on plate.

I would say when finishing you may use the dresser more often on a blanchard then a surface grinder.