If you were going to build a T & C Grinder

[Shuswap Pat]

I am thinking of building a T&C Grinder. Looking for feedback on the Stent, Quorn, or Tinker, which would be they way to go.

Pat

[dp]

Advertise for an unfinished kit - there has to be a zillion of them out there.

[lane]

My advise is to take a hard look at the Stent and go from their. are build something along that line . Quorn is a no go I built one. Yes it looks impressive ,buy a pain to use. You need a X Y table travel and a head that will move up and down and tilt . Any thing else is a bonus.

[.RC.]

What do you want to sharpen??

[J Tiers]

yeah, what?

because almost every hobby guy T&C like Quorn (which should be a place in Iran, not a grinder, so I'll call it "Qom" for short, both are associated with deeply held and sometimes violent religious beliefs.) is set up under the assumption that your needs and intent is to sharpen end mills...

me, I'd like to do that, probably, but if my (still hypothetical) T&C NEVER did that I could stand it...... What I want to sharpen are bigger milling cutters: shell end mills,plain 4" diameter cutters, helical milling cutters, side mills, taps, slitting saws, etc. End mills I tend to toss when dull, unless they are good older US brands, in which case I's like to sharpen them also.

But the "Qom" grinder and the Tinker, seem way out of scale for a 4" cutter, I'd be inclined to say "no way" without very considerable modification. The Qom has probably got the basic capability and size, but needs a different work mandrel setup.

[Bill Pace]

I'm with Lane --- Though I've never built one, I've read much comments on the Quorn and pretty much across the board its considered to be high on the difficult to build scale and so fiddly to use after construction that most guys wont fool with them.

The Stent generally gets good reviews, though is still pretty high on the difficult construction scale.

The Tinker is a pretty easy build, but as a trade-off isnt quite as versatile ......

[gary hart]

Got this little X-Y table that had bought couple years ago from a friend and had this ball bearing rails slide from junking out some freebie from another friend.

Mated the little X-Y table to the ball bearing slide. Mated couple pieces of metal to form a sort of angle plate that swivels.

Had a ER25 collet set that had bought for a little mill that was missing the spindle and drive and had an extra ER25 collet holder with 1/2" shank that had order in case my first choice didn't work.

Drilled, bored and reamed some 1" steel plate to take the 1/2" shank. The ER25 collet holder had enough meat so was able to drill two rows of holes behind the collet nut for indexing. One row of 8 for divisions of 2, 4 & 8 and another row of 6 holes for divisions of 3 & 6.

Got work holder that will rotate in two planes, table with X & Y travel and ball bearing slide of 2 or 3 inches. Haven't got to grinding wheel but think it will only need up and down travel.

Already have a home grown T&C grinder that had made and was thinking this one would work good just for things like horizontal cutters, gear cutter, hole saws and maybe things like router bits. Not working with a plan just adding one thing at at time.

[Brett Hurt]

so where do get the blue prints foe these Brett I would like to build one

[bob ward]

There is a lot of info here on the Quorn and lookalikes such as the Bonelle. You have to join but that is simple.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/quorn_owners/

And there is also this group. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ToolGrinding/


On the trivia side, I've just learned there is a small town in South Australia called Quorn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn,_South_Australia

[.RC.]

The ideal would be just to make a few simple devices... My experience is with tool grinders is they take a long time to setup just to sharpen one tool..

Then the next time you want to go use them the previous setup is not suitable and you have to spend some more time setting it all up...

The ideal would be a small number of dedicated cheap grinders set up to do the more common sharpening jobs...

A simple bench grinder with angle attachment for square lathe tools...

A simple grinder for end mills...

A dedicated TC grinder for the more unusual jobs like flutes and stuff..