Surface Grinding on a Bridgeport mill

[Chips Everywhere]

Having little experience grinding, but having the need to service dovetails on a cross slide. The thought of mounting a wheel on a BP to address the dovetails popped up. Can this be done successfully?

These are the drawback that come to mind:

-not enough rpm for the wheel
-table moves too slow, causing the wheel to excessively rub on the part
-Exposing the mill to grit
-Potentially having the part bow from the table sagging under its own weight as it travels.

I’m going to send the cross slide out to be ground, I’m just curious if one can get good results using a mill.

 

[michiganbuck]

If the mill is accurate enough to grind a dovetail, then likely it should be good enough to mill a dovetail.

You could try to make the best finish you can and mill it...unless you want it hard.
One could hang a tool post grinder on a mill and grind away..but I would not do that to my mill.

 

[Chips Everywhere]

The dovetail is hardened, can only grind it.

 

[michiganbuck]

How to do it? I like to dress the wheel to the needed angle so the bump rail and the chuck help to control squareness/straightness..and the part can easily be returned to the set-up...and tweaking the angle is changing the dress angle...a dresser set on a sine can be tweaked .001(or what).
But each to his own grinder hands do things as they like.

 

[Philabuster]

The dovetail is hardened, can only grind it.

How hard is it? What size dovetail? I would try a coated carbide dovetail cutter before resorting to a grinding wheel in a Bridgeport.

 

[Chips Everywhere]

It’s about 16” long. 60°, I don’t recall the dimensions.

I’m not going to grind it myself, going to send it out. If I mess up I’ll total the lathe. I was just curious if it could be done on a mill.

 

[Scottl]

Could work if you mount the work on a relatively unworn part of the table.

I've even done "surface grinding" on a drill press using a dressed cup wheel by sliding manually back and forth with the work sitting on a smooth plate and adding paper shims to increase feed depth.

As good as real surface grinding? Hell no, but better than nothing.