We do know how to use all of our grinders here, though this is the problem. Our tool room does not have much grinding knowledge as they do not do it on a daily basis. Average length of time that one of our tool room guys has been here is 30 years, and they have never been in the cutter grinding department hardly a day in their lives. We have two five axis tool grinders that do high tolerance, step drill and miniature end mills all day long. As far as sharpening standard drills if a customer sends them to us we might do it or farm them out to another shop becuase we have enough volume in the specialty tools to keep busy. But with our customers, screw machine length under 1/2 inch it is usually cheaper to "toss and replace" than have them sharpened due to coatings, and therefore tool life becomes a problem if they are sharpened but not recoated. If there was much downtime we probably would be sharpening our tool rooms drills on a regular basis, which is what one of our part timers does for the endmills back there, but he doesn't have enough time to keep on top of his normal work plus endmills and then drills on top of that. I think I agree that below say 5/16 it isn't really worth sharpening hardly at all, though over that I think that it would be a good idea to have a good drill point grinder kicking around that many people know how to use. Does anyone know of a decent drill point grinder that is easy to use and is very well built, and is also easy to aquire, cost is a factor but if it is well worth owning isn't a problem?
Husker