Thread: Drill bit grinders take 2

Ok, well according to the grand poobah here I'm not allowed to mention a certain brand of drill sharpener, even in a negative context, nor any other Chinese grinder.

So with that in mind, can anyone suggest a drill bit grinder for around the US$700 mark (that aren't sold by Grizzly, as no professional machine shop would ever have anything from there ) but is still capable of reasonably accurate results? I'd like something capable of web thinning and split point geometry.

Cheers,
Pete

http://cgi.ebay.com/DAREX-DRILL-SHAR...item19b74332ad

The Darex M5 what I have in the shop. It works good. I opted for CBN wheels, I cannot remember what wheels came with it. But CBN wheels are good because they keep their shape (and corners) for a long time. Needless to say, badly worn or broken drills should be roughed in (offhand) on a regular grinder back in the 'dirty room'. Actually Darex had a pretty decent price on the 6" CBN wheels.....maybe $175 each. That was for a wheel with a 1" wide face, looks like about 1/8" of CBN.

The left hand wheel is for drill sharpening, the right hand one does the split point. The wheels are the same on both ends, just the fixtures are different. About the only thing that I've had to replace were the plastic straps that serve as 'bearings' in the rotation fixture.

As for web thinning, you can do that with an angle grinder or a 2" cutoff disk in a die grinder. You just need to reduce the web a bit, then grinding the split takes care of the rest.

The Darex is an excellent machine, but a modern version sells here (in Australia) for about $2.5K That's well out of the budget. You just NEVER see them come up used on ebay here sadly.

Just go out and price a Black Diamond and a Winslow. These are both expensive and make the Darex look cheap. Before the Chinese stuff came out, most of the people that I knw thought a Darex was cheap! It's just a matter of perspective.
JR

I have a Lisle, pita to use, but if you get it right it does a good job. If you get a used one make sure the area where the grinding depth screw rubs is not worn. It will wear concave and will cause the wheel to do the same, and the drill the opposite. If it is just J B weld a nice straight "wear plate" over the worn area and change it every few years. Less than 600.00 new, I paid 50.00 for mine.

Has anyone tried the SRD grinders?



I have one but it's missing the drill holder. Seems like a nice simple design.

i bought one used on this board and am quite pleased with it. needed some extra wheels for machine and the company was great to deal with

Ed

Originally Posted by Screwmachine

Has anyone tried the SRD grinders?



I have one but it's missing the drill holder. Seems like a nice simple design.

Those IMHO are the very best drill grinder I have ever used for drills within their size range, you can sharpen a 1/4" drill and get a hole that a .251 gage pin will not enter, they have been my favorite drill grinder over the years, I think they have been sold under several different brands. Some of them were somehow equipped to even do reamers.

Bill

I have one with all the attachments to do drills, taps, reamers and end mills, plus the split pointer.

Too bad Darex didn't sell many units in Australia. Here, used M2-M5 units are commonly available for $500 US or so. They're quick to use, easy to find wheels for, and fairly accurate (but by no means the best), with a range up to 1 1/8" with all three collets. Some cheap competing units only go to 1/2 to 3/4" size, though perhaps with better centering.

I will say the cheap plastic Made-in-US? DD made by Darex does have one potential use in a commercial shop. A DD plus a LEFT HAND chuck is maybe a third the price of just the left hand chuck for the Darex units. Some commercial units may not even have a left hand pointing option.

Most shops only use left hand bits rarely -- for drilling out bolts for example -- but end up buggering up the drills most every time. You really want the point to be centered, and at least for me the "muscle memory" is different enough for a left hand bit that it isn't easy to get it just right. The Darex medical-professional-with-a-dubious-doctorate drill pointer is a cheap and usable way of getting a left hand drill pointing capability for the few times it will be needed in a small commercial shop.

The SRD grinder is great for sharpening drill bits. It is simple, precise and fast. I have several: micro, medium and large. Left hand bits are easy, with an inexpensive and simple attachment.

I played with the point splitter, but could not get it to perform, even after reading the instructions. Guess I need a lesson. I have not tried the end mill attachment (ends only) because I have a Darex E-90.

The catch, of course is that a new SRD is well over the $700 AUS that was in the original question.

The Lisle 91000 is in the price range, at least in the USA.

I have a very rare NOS Lisle 92000 drill grinder. It is rare because it was not successful, probably because the price was high. It was too well made to compete at Darex's M2 pricing at the time. It is built around a Baldor double end bench grinder and uses chucks with cams rather like the Darex M2, etc. But there are no plastic structural parts to break, like those little straps that Darex used. Mine is unused because I like the SRD grinders so well I don't need to try out the Lisle.

Larry

Good to know that the SRDs are well regarded. I'll have to shell out for a drill holder I guess. I actually have an Optima all tooled up, but the SRD looks even simpler to operate .

Thanks for the replies guys. I haven't used the currently sold Darex but have watched the online video, the V-390 would be perfect but just too far from the budget.

Sadly I'm in a bit of a dilemma here. The bottom line is that I will certainly keep an eye on the second hand market but the trouble in Oz is that we went through 20 years ago what you guys are suffering now; massive export of manufacturing capabilities. In a nutshell, if we don't dig it up we don't produce it. Maybe a BIT harsh, it's not "nothing", but you get the idea anyway. Thank goodness we dig up lots though, so the economy here is pretty good Basically it means that there's bugger all on the second hand market, and what's there is generally rooted (I'll let you figure out what that Australianism means )

The Asia produced drill grinders are probably the only option I can see, but forum rules are that we can't discuss whether they're any good or not. If you walk into a machinery dealer here you'll part with just under A$1100 for one. Now I don't know about over in the US, maybe you guys are a lot richer than us, but here in Oz, that's not the sort of thing the average bloke is going to have in his garage to sharpen his spade bits! So there's no point in asking on a DIY forum about them

Going through the internet I can get an Asian grinder for A$6-700, right on budget but have really no way of finding out if they're any good. As they're sold under many different badges Google is useless, and the source often dubious. Always the sceptic I'm going to lean on them being no good until I hear otherwise. I don't want to waste 700 bucks!

So the upshot of this is that, ironically, I will probably just go out and buy a Drill Doctor to sharpen all my non-critical bits. At the moment I keep a couple of sets of 0.1mm rise for precision work only and will continue to just throw the blunt ones in a draw.

Anyway, bit POed about this as I'd always found the BB so useful, so sorry for the tone, but I'm not about to drop 700 bucks on something I know nothing about ... better to drop 200 on something I know lots about

Am I allowed to post this?

This is what we use

http://vertexmachinery.en.ecplaza.net/11.asp

Very good. Not Chinese. Paid around £350 GBP.

Originally Posted by Chattaman

Am I allowed to post this?

Apparently not, it's considered a "hobby machine". While Taiwan produces some very good (and also very bad) machines, it's the Republic of China, therefore can't be discussed here.

However big cheers for that as this was the machine I was looking at

PeteF,if you have two hands and a reasonable eye you could save that money for the Christmas party. The trouble with most even vaguely affordable drill sharpeners is they only cover the range that's easy to grind off-hand anyway. I have an incomplete(no collets) Christen 03-6 which covers 0.3mm to 6mm for my old age. Anything over 2-2.5mm up to say 14mm is fairly easy to hand grind, practice is the thing. I think many, including myself, lose confidence when they make the mistake of stopping to think about the process & decide it's impossible to do accurately enough. That's when one reaches for a machine to do it. Fortunately, just at the time I'd reached that point & had bought one of those near useless attachments, that take too long to set up anyway, a friend whom I cannot refuse handed me a couple of tins of drills he'd bought at a farm clearance sale, to sharpen for him. These drills 1/8 to 1/2 inch(about 200) looked like they'd been stored underwater, many butchered & having negative, odd relief, odd lips, some no point at all. A good lunchtimes project at work. First step gently bead blast them to assess the actual damage, only about 5 rejects. Sharpened the rest over two lunch hours. No longer any doubts about ability & mission accomplished, all except the rejects good for drilling holes as good as new drills. It's a bit like scraping, impossible till you decide you'll do it.

Originally Posted by swarfless

PeteF,if you have two hands and a reasonable eye you could save that money for the Christmas party. The trouble with most even vaguely affordable drill sharpeners is they only cover the range that's easy to grind off-hand anyway. I have an incomplete(no collets) Christen 03-6 which covers 0.3mm to 6mm for my old age. Anything over 2-2.5mm up to say 14mm is fairly easy to hand grind, practice is the thing.

I used to be able to hand-sharpen drills down to 3mm but my eyes aren't up to it now. I still do drills to 1/4" though. I learnt how at TAFE many, many years ago. I'm willing to concede that my freehand sharpened drills won't drill as accurate hole as a new drill or one sharpened on a professional grinder, but they do well enough for 95% of the holes I drill, and I keep a set of drills especially for tapping holes or other holes which need to be right on size.

Bigger drills are easier to sharpen than smaller ones. I'd probably buy a drill grinder if I ever saw an industrial model at an affordable price, but I don't even bother looking. The last Ebay prices on T&C grinders were ridiculous enough.

PDW

I have a Lisle, paid $125 used, as I recall.

Yes, they're not the most intuitive to set up, but once set, they work very well. I'm pretty good at off-hand grinding, and if I just need to poke a hole (say, for a self-tapping sheetmetal screw) I can get damn close just by eye, no gages.

But in the time it usually takes me to do a larger drill- say, anything over 3/4"- unless I have to grind back a badly burned corner or something, setting and using the Lisle is usually a bit faster, if I need a precise grind.

They're by no means the best, but they're a pretty darn good choice.

Doc.

Thanks Doc, can't say I've seen them out here. I had to have a chuckle about the shifter hanging off the adjustment on photo 13 of the manual http://www.lislecorp.com/instructions/91000instr.pdf Step one in immediately making your product look dodgy Still, it could be worse ... it could be made in ... Asia

Pete
Check your PM box.

Pete V.