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ISO Drill Sharpening Service

Land O Aches

Plastic
Joined
Apr 2, 2015
Location
Seattle
Comrades:

We are a small shop with neither the time or equipment to sharpen drill bits. Surely there is a small, preferably veteran owned business in the US committed to sharpening drill bits?

Please report your experiences with such shops. We've got a handful of standard size bits that need love. Thanks!

Luke
Taken Barstools
Lynden WA
 
Comrades:

We are a small shop with neither the time or equipment to sharpen drill bits. Surely there is a small, preferably veteran owned business in the US committed to sharpening drill bits?

Please report your experiences with such shops. We've got a handful of standard size bits that need love. Thanks!

Luke
Taken Barstools
Lynden WA

Should probably expand a bit on what you are looking at/for... Standard 118° point hss drills -small?large? Hss split point? Carbide drills 130°/140° point, etc.

Also going to be different in price and quality if you need re-point for aero work, or if you are drilling clearance holes and such (job shop general purpose)....
 
OP may never come back and let us know... If HSS drills, just sharpen yourself by hand, a little practice and off you go. I used to be able to do smaller drills (1/8") but the eyesight is not so good these days. Should be no problem with a little practice to do 1/4" and up, if you don't need a well defined point for some stupid print req'mt. And smaller HSS are cheap enough not worth sharpening (except to practice?)...
 
Comrades:

We are a small shop with neither the time or equipment to sharpen drill bits. Surely there is a small, preferably veteran owned business in the US committed to sharpening drill bits?

Please report your experiences with such shops. We've got a handful of standard size bits that need love. Thanks!

Luke
Taken Barstools
Lynden WA

What is the difference between an ISO drill sharpening business and an ordinary drill sharpening business?
 
Hi All:
I rarely take issue with a query like this, but in this case...WTF??

A machine shop that can't figure out how to manage its holemaking?
You won't take the 2 minutes of time to make sure you've got a sharp drill to make a hole?
You can't drop a thousand bucks on a used Darex SP2500 from EBay?
You can't figure out how to buy new drills if you can't or won't sharpen them?
You won't take the time to learn how on a bench grinder if you're too cheap to get a dedicated machine for this?

IMO making stuff requires a minimum skill set if you want to be competitive...a machine shop or maker of any kind who cannot even maintain the basic skills to sharpen a drill has got a big problem.

Moving on to the nature of the hope for a solution expressed by the OP...just who do you think is going to try to pay the bills with a standalone drill sharpening service in 2021 in America.
How much do you think you could get for a sharpened drill under 1/2" diameter...a couple of bucks perhaps??
How many drills do you think a guy would have to sharpen in a month to make the rent?
How much do you think a guy could ask for a sharpened 1" drill...10 bucks...20 bucks?

At those sorts of prices, how much time do you think a sharpening service could afford to spend on a single drill to unpack it, read the customer instructions, stick it in the machine, re-box it, re-label it and get it on its way.
Just the shipping and handling kills the profit.

I have the toy needed to do this and I wouldn't dream of trying to make this a standalone business...I spent the 1300 bucks to get the machine and I grind drills when I need them...I consider it a basic investment if I want to be in the business of making things.
For decades I used a simple bench grinder and got good enough that I never spent more than a couple of minutes to re-point a drill...the Darex is a convenience now that I'm old with poorer eyesight, but pointing drills by hand is not rocket science.

I encourage the OP to figure this out on his own...it's not that hard and it's not that expensive.

Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining
 
I will only do business with a shop that hits at least 3 of the marks. Black, woman, crippled, mentally retarded, gay, tranny, dope addict, and Oprah viewer. If you can't lay claim to at least three of those...forget it. The only exception is if you are a only a liberal, I figure that covers the bases just as well. Of course, if you do pass muster in those categories, you won't be able to sharpen a drill bit. It's a hell of a mess.
 
I have the toy needed to do this and I wouldn't dream of trying to make this a standalone business...I spent the 1300 bucks to get the machine and I grind drills when I need them...I consider it a basic investment if I want to be in the business of making things.
Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining

Just curious as to how many of the standard drill points you can do with this toy. 118/135 does not count as different.
Or does it such even matter?
Interesting how little information a google search turns up about this complicated subject so perhaps no one cares and one just does the basic swing with a split.
For sure step one is a bench grinder and that twist and move thing which actually takes some practice to have a long lasting tip.
Few can match even a standard basic grind doing so but I have seen people awesome at doing it off hand.

Drill points for a lot of use....., OMG this is worse than carbide grades coatings and that whole mess.
It should be so simple and basic....:wall:

I can see the wanting to go outside for even a easy repoint as good thinking. I can not do it and someone else is good and fast at it.
Some may be why can't you do this in house but I see no shame here.
Bob
 
Hi CarbideBob:
So the machine I have was one of the handier toolroom drill grinders of its day for shops that use drills 1 inch and under in diameter, but it's not a production machine; it's intended for shops that use drills not shops that make drills.

I can grind a dull but not chewed up 1/4" drill and split the point in a bit over a minute start to finish, so if I could stand it, I could probably grind 50 drills an hour for as many hours as it takes to make me cross eyed and loopy.

So a guy with enough drills to grind could grind a hundred bucks an hour of drills but as you and I both know, he could spend double that time with handling and shipping and billing and correspondence and etc etc.

A machine like this could probably run for 2 months before the plated CBN wheel is toast and the guts are usually pretty worn if a machine like this gets full time use for a year.
Nothing is hardened except the cams, commodity grade steels are used for many of the moving bits and the shielding is mostly non-existent.
But it's not a production machine and for my use it'll go for decades...I'm probably a pretty average one man shop for the number of holes I drill in a year, and I run HSS drills, so nowhere near a production facility...maybe 2500 holes a year in sizes from 0.004" to 1" being 90% of what I do.
This grinder can run 1/16" to 1".

The point angle is set by the wheel...adjustment of anything like relief angle is quite painful...it's designed so you can throw in a drill and get a usable standard 118 deg RH split point result within a minute and it does that very well, but if you want something different; forget it on the Darex.

Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining

BTW, a 4 facet freehand grind is pretty easy to learn, so no complex drill movements to master, it's probably as much or more about being able to see when you've got it right enough to cut well.
I've taught buddies who love to do their own projects in an hour or so and with another 5 to 10 hours of practice, they were good enough to grind drills that would make a perfectly decent hole, and do it repeatably and without further handholding.
It's truly not that hard.
MC
 








 
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