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Drill Sharpener Recomendations

jrmach

Titanium
Joined
Jun 9, 2012
Location
Boise,Idaho USA
Have a need to quit hand grinding drills by hand after a couple of decades.
Wanna buy new,,,Best Bang for the Buck ?
Need up to 1/2" capacity at least and need to split point
Budget suggests $1000 to $1500
 
I have a Darex M5 and it works very well. I put CBN wheels on it. It sits on a stand in the corner and is very quick to setup for any size bit that needs to be sharpened. They are all over Ebay and are very reasonable.

Stuart
 
A customer was asking me the other day if I'd ever seen a Brierley. I hadn't so I Youtubed a video and it looked interesting. If I was looking, I'd check one out. ZB35 I believe the model number was.
 
i also have the m-5 with all the bells and whistles, it is not for sale.
i would like to inform you of a possible problem you might have purchasing one
when i bought this new about1996 it took 3 exchanges before i could get that would run with out breaking the filament in the light bulb.
fortunately my SIL took it apart and balanced the motor and he told me it is the worst looking motor he had ever seen.
they were mexican made motors and fella said they were having a lot of recalls at the factory on them.
can not say they were allbad just the ones with the mexican motors
 
I might see funky out of round abrasive wheels causing a imbalance, which isn't all that uncommon, but a naked motor being bunk seems weird to me. Tons of motors are made in Mexico...just saying!

Stuart
 
the wheels were new with the grinder steel with borazon coating.
when i had received the 3rd grinder i was a little bit stressed about it, and therefore called immediately a young fella answered and he was very helpful with the fact that they were switching over to mexican made motors i wasn't aware til later that i had called on a Saturday and that i had spoke to someone on the floor he was very helpful with info more than you would get from management
waited til Monday called and got somebody from management explained what i had heard on Saturday and asked that she get a new light bulb go on the floor and install the bulb in an m=5 and test it til she got a machine that wouldn't break the filament .
what i got from her was an earful about who let the cat out of the bag i didn't tell her who it was.
it had 3 distinct periods of vibrations when going up to speed and when coming down from speed and left a terrible looking surface on the drill bit.
it now has stopped the vibrating with a mirror finish however it has a very light harmonics to it but no vibrations i guess you could only do so much with it
 
I have had a black Diamond I would have capet it if it would have done at least 3/4 " it only would go to 1/2 I liked it a lot better than my darex M5. Ken
 
My 1B Black Diamond does #70 to 11/32 with the 3/8" master collet.

I bought another off FleeBay that went to 3/4" and robbed parts off it to do 3/8 to 3/4" and sold the rest off for the about the original price. I can now do the full range and split points.

I recently sharpened some cheap silver and deming drills that were barely used and was amazed at how much better they cut.

As Moonlight said, you get a perfect grind every time.
 
I would not limit your possibilities by only buying a new machine. There are a LOT of very nice machines to be had that are in great shape used and that would be way outside your budget if bought new. Add me to the list of guys that use a Black Diamond - I picked up a BW-95PC with the CBN (Borazon) wheel (this is their current model that they make and sell now) for $300.00 on eBay recently. This grinder is sold new for almost $8,000.00. Deals can be had if you are patient.
 
My 1B Black Diamond does #70 to 11/32 with the 3/8" master collet.

I bought another off FleeBay that went to 3/4" and robbed parts off it to do 3/8 to 3/4" and sold the rest off for the about the original price. I can now do the full range and split points.

I recently sharpened some cheap silver and deming drills that were barely used and was amazed at how much better they cut.

As Moonlight said, you get a perfect grind every time.

I sharpened some expensive cobalt s&ds and was amazed at how much better they cut. I payed 500.00 for mine and could not be happier.
 
We got the Darex xt3000 at work and it is absolute garbage. I would take a decent pedestal grinder with a dressed wheel and one good eye over this thing. Especially at near $4K!!
 
For drills 1/4" and under I am very happy with my Christen drill grinder. A good used one can be obtained for well under 1K. For drills 1/4"-1/2" I am using my Deckel SO - I've posted in the past notes and photos describing my technique. I've never got good result with Darex XT-3000. I still have it, but not using it at all.
 
To be honest, my experience with Darex has been poor. I have also a Black Diamond I bought off eBay and completely restored to new condition. It works perfectly, but more importantly to me was the superb support I received from the company. All parts are still available, even for very old machines. However, it is not economical to sharpen small drills and I do almost as good a job by hand on a Baldor tool grinder. Therefore, in my case, sharpening drill bits less than 1/2" is done mostly as an emergency, as opposed to standard practice.
 
I have a TDR / SRD grinder that is small and portable that I use both for work and my home shop. It works well and was a great price for a used one.
I have used several others over the years my favorite is the Optima but both the tooling and grinder are very expensive.

Andy
 
If you can find one, I'm a big fan of the Cincinnati Spiropoint. They do a nice job.

The Spiropoint suffers a critical design flaw shared with numerous other types of drill grinders - the drill bit is not rotated around it's own axis to generate the grind, resulting in poor concentricity of the ground point. Fine for big drills in a radial, but not a good fit in a machineshop.

The Brierley and similar designs with a cam spindle that rotate the drill bit around it's own axis make for far better accuracy.
 
I would not limit your possibilities by only buying a new machine. There are a LOT of very nice machines to be had that are in great shape used and that would be way outside your budget if bought new. Add me to the list of guys that use a Black Diamond - I picked up a BW-95PC with the CBN (Borazon) wheel (this is their current model that they make and sell now) for $300.00 on eBay recently. This grinder is sold new for almost $8,000.00. Deals can be had if you are patient.



So you got that one, what a steal!
 
Yup, I think the seller shot himself in the foot because he had it listed as local pickup only but was willing to ship. After I saw it relisted multiple times with the price going ever lower I decided to try asking for a shipping quote. That came back within half an hour so I made an offer and it was accepted. I had a BW-80 already but this one was too good to pass up.
 








 
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