Richard King
Diamond
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2005
- Location
- Cottage Grove, MN 55016
I see this question all the time and I will tell you how I have done it. One is simple you send it to a company like Cash has and they grind it on a way grinder. We did a thread a couple of years ago that will help you if you can dismantle your machine
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/...n/large-capacity-grinding-company-usa-319232/
But what if you cant send it out or have an emergency?
I have a few methods that worked for me over the years. Had to have been around 10 years ago I went down to Cloyes Gear in Paris Arkansas to teach a 1 week scraping class to the maintenance department. It is a pretty big company. During the class the production shop foreman asked me to come and advise them on what they could do with a CNC slant bed lathe out in the shop. I walked over there and there sat a Japanese lathe they were running and the shut it down, removed the way covers and the Z and X Axis and they were box ways and were worn about .010" in the center and the ends were original. They had run the same production part on the machine 24/7 for about 5 years and when they wanted to change parts and couldn't.
I said the machine needed to be taken apart and sent out. They said they couldn't stop production in the plant because that machine was buried in the middle of the shop in a cell. I told them I could make it better then it was but the repair had some drawbacks. They said to go for it. I had the 2nd shift pull the machine apart and the next day I took the class out to the shop and we started to grind the worn hardened ways by angle grinder using 2" disk 60 grit pads. We used the same method I call "Blind Scraping" and that's when you spread highlighter Yellow Canode or in the old days we used red lead. This covers the surface with a light film and when you grind or scrape that area it goes away and it comes down evenly.
We used that method until the ways mic'ed with-in .001 and then we blued up a straight edge and grind off the blue spots until it was flat and with-in .0002" on average. We had a few low spots as you will have a few accidents when grinding. The long and short of it we used a small hand held angle grinder to grind the hardened ways to get them flat. There are a few You Tube shows on this Chris German who goes by CGPrecision on there is Ironsmith on PM ground a machine with a hand air grinder and cut of wheel.
Hand grinding hardened ways - YouTube works pretty slick.
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/...n/large-capacity-grinding-company-usa-319232/
But what if you cant send it out or have an emergency?
I have a few methods that worked for me over the years. Had to have been around 10 years ago I went down to Cloyes Gear in Paris Arkansas to teach a 1 week scraping class to the maintenance department. It is a pretty big company. During the class the production shop foreman asked me to come and advise them on what they could do with a CNC slant bed lathe out in the shop. I walked over there and there sat a Japanese lathe they were running and the shut it down, removed the way covers and the Z and X Axis and they were box ways and were worn about .010" in the center and the ends were original. They had run the same production part on the machine 24/7 for about 5 years and when they wanted to change parts and couldn't.
I said the machine needed to be taken apart and sent out. They said they couldn't stop production in the plant because that machine was buried in the middle of the shop in a cell. I told them I could make it better then it was but the repair had some drawbacks. They said to go for it. I had the 2nd shift pull the machine apart and the next day I took the class out to the shop and we started to grind the worn hardened ways by angle grinder using 2" disk 60 grit pads. We used the same method I call "Blind Scraping" and that's when you spread highlighter Yellow Canode or in the old days we used red lead. This covers the surface with a light film and when you grind or scrape that area it goes away and it comes down evenly.
We used that method until the ways mic'ed with-in .001 and then we blued up a straight edge and grind off the blue spots until it was flat and with-in .0002" on average. We had a few low spots as you will have a few accidents when grinding. The long and short of it we used a small hand held angle grinder to grind the hardened ways to get them flat. There are a few You Tube shows on this Chris German who goes by CGPrecision on there is Ironsmith on PM ground a machine with a hand air grinder and cut of wheel.
Hand grinding hardened ways - YouTube works pretty slick.
