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Opinions wanted on J&S 540 ways

Jarrod

Aluminum
Joined
Jul 18, 2011
Location
Toronto, ON
Hi all,

I'm not as familiar with flaking on grinder ways, but I gather these aren't so bad for a 50 to 60 year old machine. Would you agree?

Considering buying this grinder, but still a bit on the fence about it. Thought some of you might have some insight to share on the Jones and Shipman.

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Regards,



J.
 
The wear is visible and it is obvious that it's not in new condition, but do you necessarily need that? Scraping a grinder is a tall order and requires specific equipment. A simple and more thorough evaluation would be to grind a stiff test piece then measure it on the granite. Should it grind to within a few tenths of a thousands and it's to your satisfaction, you may then simply re-flake the ways to minimize any further wear.

If the price and overall condition are good then I wouldn't hesitate to buy it.
 
I bought one that was badly worn. Not the table ways, but the cross ways. That's the area to check.

Was it bad enough that you could see the wear show up in the finished piece parts you ground?

Did you rebuild, sell or grin and bare it?
 
There is no good way of judging wear to a number value just by looking at it. If you need a quick and dirty way on a purchase visit you could bring in a knife straight edge and feeler gauges. See if there is any light below the edge and assuming the magnet has been ground recently any curve in the magnet well above a thou well judge if it needs re-scraping.

Below is an image of the base to a Boyar schultz grinder, the streaked section is low .010in. This extraordinary amount was due to paint and grit wearing from an improper paint job getting paint on the saddle way.
IMG_2306.jpg
 
Another practical way to assess quickly the effect of wear on linearity, bring a trusty parallel, a few shims, a tenth indicator on magnetic base and a ruler: place the parallel first along the table axis, shim it so that it doesn't rock and write down the reading of the indicator every inch or two. Repeat it for the saddle ways. Then plot the data: you aren't necessarily looking at an horizontal line (shimming the parallel to have a zero-zero reading is just a waste of time, you just need to shim it enough for it not to rock on the table or chuck), but the result of the plot should be a rather straight line. Any deviation from straight will translate in curvature on the part you want to grind flat.
I hope my description of the procedure is understandable. This test will take you less than five minutes.

Paolo
 
Was it bad enough that you could see the wear show up in the finished piece parts you ground?

Did you rebuild, sell or grin and bare it?

None of the above. I needed the room for a HLV and accessories into my workshop is very difficult so I sold the chuck and wheel adapters, robbed any useful bits and smashed it up with a sledge hammer, gave it to the scrap man.
 
None of the above. I needed the room for a HLV and accessories into my workshop is very difficult so I sold the chuck and wheel adapters, robbed any useful bits and smashed it up with a sledge hammer, gave it to the scrap man.

That's bad ass!
 
Probably should have mentioned, the grinder isn't under power.

The fellow selling it, who is very honest, has had it sitting on the pallet since he got it. I'm not entirely sure he knew how to use it, but he got it on a bad debt from a company he dealt with. They went belly up and gave him the machine to settle. It's been sitting there idle ever since.
 
I guess as you are asking your'e not a precision engineer - neither am I, but a guy who wants it for a home shop. I'd do what Paolo said and then assess the data, bear in mind the ways could be fine but the hydraulics may need attention and you can't tell that unless it powered up.

You then need to weigh up how much he wants for it (vs. cost for a known good one) and if you are prepared to take the risk - what could you get for it if you sold it on and how much is it going to cost you to get it home - cos' you won't get that back.

If you need to make a living on it then it's probably not the one for you.
 
If you live in the Golden Horseshoe, you can do much better. Suggest waiting for a running machine you can check out properly.

L7
 
Besides the wear in the ways what I don't like to see is all the grinding swarf on the underside of the table area. This will as well probably be causing issues with the lube system.
 
Dont try and re scrape lube scraping leave alone
A straight wont tell you much unless if you pull it apart
Id check for table rock and pick up and galling from poor lube
Test bar and clock to test for straightness and a indicator to test for rock in the table.
It DOES have wear but the beauty of grinders is it can be adjusted out unless your trying to split tenths
 
Besides the wear in the ways what I don't like to see is all the grinding swarf on the underside of the table area. This will as well probably be causing issues with the lube system.

That is a very good point! It is filthy. I'm not sure if that is a symptom of not having coolant or if it was just neglected. Either way it is a little sketchy in terms of how well taken care of this machine was.
 








 
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