Thread: Surface grinder restoration, please help...

Those oil rollers usually are spring loaded under the roller. How about a picture of the roller and the carrier that holds them up. I have stretched the springs or replaced them in the past.

Originally Posted by Richard King

Those oil rollers usually are spring loaded under the roller. How about a picture of the roller and the carrier that holds them up. I have stretched the springs or replaced them in the past.

I knew a guy who put the old wooden thread spools in his oil pots.. don't know how that worked out.

Looks like Stang got his moneys worth on the ways tune up. I’d still look for a parts manual & see if the automation could be put back in order. The work quality would improve by miles when you don’t have your hands grabbing all over the grinder while trying to get a great looking part.

I was a Radiac (Salem IL plant) fan way back for stones, Norton had trouble competing on straight up aluminum oxide (price) and had nothing similar to the pink rocks (ALO vs ALO+CrO3, the fused chrome oxide makes for a 20%ish bump up on cool cutting & wheel wear at a just a slightly higher price). Another REAL BIG deal was that radiac would sell to shops direct, where norton came through distributors only. That said, nobody back then had anything to compete with the Norzon, others may be better with the sol-gel types these days, I dunno.

Good luck,
Matt

Agree the Norton tool room wheels have lost near best spot they used to have. Radiac and Bay State had the best pink wheels but Bay State may no longer be making wheels.
Now Carborundum white wheel is the best white wheel and their cool series wheels are much like the pop corn wheels we used for chuck grinding and very hard part grinding. They are harder but with low consintration (open), so they grind harder material and run cool.
I would rank Radiac and Carbordrundum the best tool room wheels today.
I think Carborudum may be called Carbo and Carbo Gold and now is/may be a part of Saint Gobain (who knows where that may go for better or worse).

Originally Posted by ballen

Are you saying that the hole which goes into the bushing does not pass all the way through the bushing with an oil groove on the inside? If that's the case, perhaps the bushing is a sintered bronze permeable bearing. These are made from small bronze particles that are pressed together and heated. This forms a solid structure which has tiny holes or passages or pores, so that oil can move through it, especially when under pressure.

That's exactly what i'm saying. I was unaware of this type of bushing. That seems to make sense but when I pulled the shaft out after it had been sitting for a week it was bone dry. It didn't seem like any of the oil had penetrated the bearings. Im not sure if maybe it takes a while or requires a heavy saturation. The fit is just a friction fit so some of the excess oil spills out of the top. All it seems to do is create a mess inside the cabinet and on my floor.

Originally Posted by michiganbuck

Agree to that and another possibility it may be a drill-on-location part and never got drilled. I guess we need to view a service manual on the machine to be sure.
Question: if it were drilled where would excess the oil go? Could a grease or oil tube and a grease or oil once a year serve the need?

I have considered this as a possibility. I'm not sure if this type of thing is common for the era. If drilled out the oil would serve to lubricate the shaft. None of the items from this oiler seem to require frequent lubrication. They seem to lubricate 3 shafts and the orbital gear and screw for the z axis. I just don't want to go drilling holes without some sort of verification. It seems odd that they do not go into the bushings themselves. From what I can tell the holes are factory. they appear to have been drilled prior to the bushings being installed. The bushings are unmarked inside the hole in the outer housing. There are even sleeves in the holes where the 4 lines enter the machine. It seems like a factory job, but maybe it was added after the fact.

Originally Posted by Richard King

Those oil rollers usually are spring loaded under the roller. How about a picture of the roller and the carrier that holds them up. I have stretched the springs or replaced them in the past.

Thanks for the reply,

Again I am out of town working but I can post more pics this weekend. From what I can tell the spring is not the issue. The screw seems to pull it down too far. With no screw the roller extends beyond the top surface. The springs don't seem to provide a ton of pressure but they serve to keep the rollers extended beyond the surface of the ways. the screw is adjustable and there is a nut on the bottom to hold it in place. This allows for a length adjustment. When I got it some of the screws were damaged or broken. I think it was improperly adjusted and that is why there was so much scarring on the ways. Even with a stronger spring the roller can not extend far enough without a longer screw to allow for more travel. I'm not sure how these are supposed to be set exactly but I assume if they do not extend past the surface they wont do anything. If these are supposed to have a lot of spring tension I can look into replacements but it seems like they should work as is once I install longer screws in the 2 rollers on the flat ways.

Originally Posted by Matt_Maguire

Looks like Stang got his moneys worth on the ways tune up. I’d still look for a parts manual & see if the automation could be put back in order. The work quality would improve by miles when you don’t have your hands grabbing all over the grinder while trying to get a great looking part.

I was a Radiac (Salem IL plant) fan way back for stones, Norton had trouble competing on straight up aluminum oxide (price) and had nothing similar to the pink rocks (ALO vs ALO+CrO3, the fused chrome oxide makes for a 20%ish bump up on cool cutting & wheel wear at a just a slightly higher price). Another REAL BIG deal was that radiac would sell to shops direct, where norton came through distributors only. That said, nobody back then had anything to compete with the Norzon, others may be better with the sol-gel types these days, I dunno.

Good luck,
Matt

I definitely feel it was worth the money. In order to remove some of the parts related to the automation function I had to destroy them. (cut them) some parts were previously damaged so I wasn't overly worried about it. It would have been nice but i'll be ok with a manual machine. My parts are relatively small and my materials come pretty flat so the overall grinding is minimal. I have a 2x72 belt grinder with a surface grinder attachment for roughing closer to a final dimension. It's actually fairly accurate for what it is. This machine is just to make those surfaces as perfect as possible so I wont have any mechanical imperfections in the final builds (at least pertaining to flatness...)

The rollers I have seen are brass or wood so they don't score the cast iron. It's simple and no need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. as long as the reservoir has oil in it. When I installed BiJur systems to old Myford grinders I used a air grinder with a Christmas tree burr and ground in new oil groves in the base and filled the reservoirs with oil. I used old and new.

Today I was able to grind the chuck and make a sample part. the finish isn't the best on the chuck. I did run coolant but there are some burn marks. I also managed to dig the wheel in a couple times. I'm definitely glad I didn't get a brand new chuck just yet. It would seem that this grinder feels best taking a half thou at a time. Even one thou seems to upset it a bit. I was taking .001 passes when the wheel dug in. The chuck was not perfectly flat so I'm thinking it hit a high spot. All of that being said I tested the surface with the finest indicator I own (.0005) and I couldn't even get the needle to move at all. The surface appears to be better than my cheap indicator is capable of reading. In light of this I plan to leave the chuck alone for now. I surface ground both sides of a piece of barstock 1084. My same indicator read about .00025 at worst. I think this is more the fault of my non rigid setup for measuring and my cheap surface plate. I can move the indicator just by applying a light pressure to my surface plate which confused me for a while until I realized I was moving the whole bench. On the micrometer the part was perfect everywhere I checked it. The machine feels pretty smooth but I did manage to break a sweat grinding the chuck. I have posted some videos of the testing on my Instagram if anyone is interested. stang_bladeworks Thanks to everyone who helped me out with this. I would not have been able to complete this project as quickly if it were not for all of you. I will be sure to post some actual parts as I complete them.

Here it is almost completly together.