New-to-me MTI Qualos surface grinder

[Highpower]

Just FYI:

There is another great source of grinding videos you may be interested in. Stan Zinkowski is the owner of Bar-Z Industrial and shares a lot of his grinding knowledge on YouTube as well. I don't own a grinder myself (no space for one) so I've had to send off some of my tooling to him to get straightened out. I can personally vouch for the quality and precision of his work, and you may find his videos helpful as well.

[f350ca]

Great videos, Thanks

[Highpower]

He's got plenty more grinding videos to watch.

For those that might not know, Stan is also the host of the 'Bar-Z summer bash' every year.  
John Mills (doubleboost) was picked this year as the winner of a brand new 20HP American Rotary phase converter! 

https://youtu.be/oewbe-y8GTM?t=437

[EdK]

I've watched most of his videos. He does have some really good ones.

Ed

[Roadracer_Al]

Stan is in the same state, but quite far away, a full day's drive.

I keep wanting to go to the BarZ bash, but never think of it at the right time.

a

[Pete O]

Those videos are great, very entertaining and educational. I'm finding that, quite apart from not having acquired the necessary skills, the equipment necessary to produce work to those sort of tolerances is out of my reach as a hobbyist; every clearing sale I have been to where there have been items of precision metrology equipment, they have been bid way out of my reach. Gear like granite angle blocks and verticality gauges shown in those vids I can only dream about. There were a pair of magnetic sine-plates like the ones in the video here, at the sale where I bought the grinder; they fetched more than I paid for the surface grinder itself. I shudder to think what a tangental wheel dresser would be worth here! Even a halfway decent surface plate has eluded me to date. I think my surface grinder will be just putting a nice finish on my inaccurate, out-of-square offerings for a good while yet. It's definitely fun to use though, and I'm enjoying just trying to make something flat.

[Dr Stan]

One of the things people tend to forget regarding surface grinding is the power of the mag to straighten warped/bent work.  One can place a thin (1/4" or less) part on the magnet.  Grind it, flip it over & repeat.  Then put it on a granite inspection block and discover they made rockers for a rocking chair.  

If you do not have a toolmakers vise I highly recommend getting or making one if you plan to do much precision work with the surface grinder.

[Pete O]

Re-visiting this thread as I have spent a bit of time with the surface grinder this week.
Having looked at a few videos, I had been wanting to properly bed the chuck for a while, needed a break from some other stuff and decided to spend some time with it a couple of afternoons ago. I took the chuck off and ground the bed where the chuck sits- there was a fair bit of a bow in it as is evidenced by the photos earlier in this thread. having got the bed nice and flat, I mounted the chuck upside down and ground the underneath, with the magnet off. Took quite a few passes before I was contacting the entire surface, then a couple of super-fine cuts to get it properly flat.
The next afternoon I flipped the chuck over, dialed in the back edge, then ground the top of the chuck with the magnet turned on. When I was finally contacting the entire surface, I took a couple of 'spring' passes and after maybe 7 hours work I ended up with a beautiful finish and a mag chuck that I'm pretty confident would be flat within a couple of tenths all over.

I decided to grind a couple of parallels, got one side done and then the crossfeed screw stripped it's thread! Didn't even know it was on it's way out until it started to get a tight spot, then let go completely in the much-used middle section. So I spent a couple of hours this evening taking the grinder apart.
It's a metric 3mm trapezoidal thread, I'm thinking it will probably be 8tpi ACME when it goes back together as I don't have the 127-tooth gear for my lathe.

Is there ever a time when doing one job does not create more work? Seems to always be the way.

[Highpower]

(10-01-2021, 05:05 AM)Pete O Wrote: Is there ever a time when doing one job does not create more work? Seems to always be the way.

In a word...

[Dr Stan]

Nice looking machine. I don't think you'll have much trouble learning how to use it as they are very straight forward.