Need a small ID/OD grinder

WTB - OD/ID circular grinder, manual or CNC based on price.

Must have:

• Collet system
• Coolant cleaner and magnetic separator
• North america electrical (60 Hz)
• Small machine (our parts are no bigger than 2" OD x 6" Long)
• Inch scales
• Parts available for purchase in North America (Ontario Canada preferred)
• .0001" infeed
• Dressing system

Would be nice:

• Work light
• Newer machine
• .00005" infeed
• Enclosed machine *
• Fume/particle extractor

Notes:
* It would be a huge plus if the machine is already enclosed - either factory direct, or after market.
Used for regular production grinding of laminated stacks of electrical steel and brittle high-strength magnets.

Normally I wouldn't post a purchase request here - we have a guy we go through to look for used machinery, but it's been four plus months and we haven't been able to snag anything. There always seems to be one thing off and we can't use the machine.

If you have something or know someone who does, please let me know.

Thanks. =8o)

Don’t know where you are on grinding but Geographically you may not be in the best place to find such an animal. I would say carefully define your needs. What you basically need the grinder for. Then define your budget.. Looks like a decent machine might fetch $4K to $20K or even more. Be sure to get a very good condition machine with the accessories you need. Don’t be afraid to fly 1000 miles to look and ship from that far (or more) if that is where the better machine happens to be.
Detroit has surplus good machines..

If your need is just an occasional one-up/ or a production job then post that and it will be easier to give advice

Thanks for the advice. The original post has been marked up.

That's where we've been hung up, on the right mix of accessories and condition. There are only a few machines out there, and fewer that meet our requirements. The biggest hangup so far is the collet chuck. This is the only way we hold parts and tooling right now. We can't touch the ID of one part due to surface finish requirements, and the other is such a beast that it can only be held in special tooling (it needs ID and OD grinding), so that goes in a collet too.

We would prefer local, but if a machine is available somewhere else and we can still get replacement parts locally (and by that I mean in-stock in Canada / US), then that's great.

It is a tough call to find the right machine for the type of special grinding you do. Your experience with the two older machines places your shop as perhaps most knowledgeable in that special field of grinding magnetic material. Studer, Drake, Kellenburg, Bryant all have been mentioned in the previous inquiry along with Brown and Sharpe, Norton, Landis ,Heald and others for old iron. I expect a new special machine for both ID and OD would be very pricey. Even just for one function would be pricey. Chucking and collect holding have come a long way from the old methods. Use of borazon and coated wheels has greatly improved some types of grinding. Some modern machines are fitted with adjust true collect chucks that can be set to <.0001 run out, and also be reground at face and ID in place for even closer sizes and concentricity . I have preferred grinding on mandrels over chucking or collect holding but that was mostly on old school machines. I have had some success with chucking and collect holding on CNC grinders to close size. *You might tell what type of collect holding device is being used. If the older machines are holding quality and production needs perhaps getting the same with rebuilding to new specs and adding a more modern chucking system would be considered. I heard of a shop that is refitting old Warner Swasey lathes with ball screw feed/stepping motors/CNC control and beating the pants off modern machines on certain work. The same might be possible with old heavy iron grinders.
Improve production, maintain or improve quality, insure older machines will not fail to continue to serve needs, all mentioned.

* For super fine sizing or concentricity and using collects that often had .0001/.0002 error I would mark and set collect to a position mark on my collect holding device to off set the error closer to zero.. Yes I have ground collects on dead true mandrels and ID ground collect holders that then would never be removed from the work head. I know one can't do that for production work.

OT: We did some gold prospecting north of Kirkland Lake off a river leading to Abitibi years ago. Found some color but not enough to pay expenses. Around Scotty we drove across a trail road bridge that was just two logs set over a river.

Took the wife up there a few year later and she asked "Why are there so many dog tracks out here in the wilderness..." Yes no more sleeping in the tent after I told her the answer.

Can't say I've ever seen, much less driven over a two log bridge (unless you count walking across a fallen tree over a creek). Sounds like you guys had fun though.

We've considered retrofitting some existing machines with a collet chuck system, but we're very leery of getting a machine in only to find it's not going to hold our tolerances after we've fussed with it.

Our problem with our two existing machines is we can't find (some) parts for them. I think if I ever saw another one of our Tschudins on the market it's possible we might grab it just for parts, lol.

We hold one part directly in a 5C collet simply because that's the only way we CAN hold it, and the other part we hold in tooling (one for ID and a similar one for OD) which gets held in the same collet.

Nothing wrong with top brand 5c with a holder and that tickled when in place by taking a few tenths off the mating angle.
Never ran a Tschundin but it looks like a top class Machine. If they are in reasonably good condition agree it a new machine might not do better.
That makes me wonder what is wrong with your current grinders. Being square and true is common for good old iron machines. Most machine hard parts can be made in any good tool room. Spindles and motors are easily replaced.
Is the problem more with your holding devices? Or just problem with a work head bore going out of tune… New work heads can be had and grinding a collect chuck installed in a head (and never taking it out) can make it run dead on.
… but yes a new modern machine might have ball lead screws, stepping motor for feed control, probes to check wheel height, perhaps sizing probes to feel size, automatic dressers and more modern holding devices. But would that make parts better or faster?
Tschudin Grinding Machine Gallery | IMTS Grinding Technology Ltd
http://www.machinemate.com/BringingNewLifeToOldGrinders.pdf

Nothing wrong with top brand 5c with a holder that tickled when in place by taking a few tenths off the mating angle.

Never ran a Tschundin but it looks like a top class Machine. If they are in reasonably good condition agree it a new machine might not do better.

That makes me wonder what is wrong with your current grinders. Being square and true is common for good old iron machines. Most machine hard parts can be made in any good tool room. Spindles and motors are easily replaced.

... but yes a new modern machine might have ball lead screws, stepping motor for feed control, probes to check wheel height, perhaps sizing probes to feel size, automatic dressers and more modern holding devices. But would that make parts better or faster?

Tschudin Grinding Machine Gallery | IMTS Grinding Technology Ltd
http://www.machinemate.com/BringingNewLifeToOldGrinders.pdf

Our current problem is we're having difficulty finding replacement parts. We have two manual machines currently, one is set up for ID the other for OD. They're similar models but there are differences. We've had to take some parts from one machine to use in the other on one or two occasions.

So it's not really a problem of not getting good parts out of the machine, and yes they do run really well. We just don't want to be caught where one machine goes down and we can't fix it. Then we're in delayed production while we have to change our second machine over every time we want to switch between ID and OD, when it hasn't been set up to do that in quite a while.

I've seen used grinders pop up on the market and get sold the same day, so we're on the verge of buying new.

One thing a new machine will do for us is add some of the angle grinding on that we currently do on a lathe. This is just small corner chamfers on either end of the parts, but it's an additional machine in the manufacturing sequence at the moment.

I should clarify an item in the original post:

• Collet system is 5C

Hi Jarrod

I am curious what product your company makes. I work for a company in Waterloo Ontario that designs and build custom electric motors so I am interested in machining magnets and laminations.

Stan

I know Switzerland is not close to Canada, but : SA Müller has plenty of Tschudin grinders.
They do sell parts and do a full rebuild if you have deep pockets.

We're a smaller company, so getting parts from overseas is not attractive to us.

We make electromagnetic parts for aircraft. The two pieces we need this machine for goes into a permanent magnet alternator. The magnets are sintered Samarium Cobalt. We also make wheel speed tachometers, proximity sensors and rotary cockpit indicators of all sorts - eg rotating number wheels, flag indicators, rotating disc indicators - basically anything that can rotate to change its display state, we make it.

Probably the most common and smallest cylindrical grinder in North America is UK manufactured, Myford. Most for sale in the marketplace tend to be older machines, however there are a few "last generation" ones out there for sale (aprox 1978 forward would be last generation) I have a 1980's Myford MG12-ME for sale with the ID attachment. Haven't decided on price yet as the ID attachment alone can sell for as much as $6,500.

The ME model has hydraulic feed on table only...no automatic feed on the head. I did have the ultimate Myford, a 1999 year MG12-HPM with automatic everything, (except it had no ID attachment, but one could be added) but sold it couple months ago.....still on on my website due to slackosity...
Procyon Machine