150mm dia grinding wheel, 30mm width ...is such available ?

Hi Murray, I don't know what type of wheel is used for aluminium cylinder heads, but in frabrication and welding dedecated grinding/cutting discs are available to fit hand held angle grinders for grinding/cutting aluninium.

Looking at Norton Abrasives website, green silicon carbide seems to be recommended for non-ferrous metals **LINK** maybe by contacting them or other abrasive manufacturers may be of help.

This http://www.nortonindustrial.com/ will take you to thier website.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 01/03/2014 12:04:02

Found this For your information

Maybe to slow and physically demanding but any millage in dressing the aluminium edge using a A300 grit diamond stone.

Nigel

This may be a stupid idea but I will throw it out anyway. Why not mount two 15 mm grinding wheels side by side on a common arbour and then dress them to the same diameter?

Mike

Hi Murmac

I do not know what your working length is? what is the maximum length of the workpiece?

Were you to fabricate a linisher you may be able to get the engine reconditioner to surface a steel platen to run the belt against for you.

The platen could be made from a length of steel maybe hot rolled black steel say 12mm by 100mm bar you should not find it hard to source from a metal merchant.

If you are handy with a welder you could weld up the whole machine from lengths of bar and tube then give it to the reconditioner as a whole for him to surface (Make sure it will fit on his grinder!) That will assure that any distortion caused by welding is corrected your platen surface will be flat. Do you have access to a lathe? The hardest part will be making the pulleys.

I wonder if it would be cost effective to lengthen a cheap Asian linisher to the size you need? that would give you the pulleys and the adjustment mechanism.

Regards
John

@tractionengine ...Hi Nigel, I do actually have a complete set of DMT diamond stones, 11 1/2" long, all the way from extra-extra coarse to extra-extra fine, which I use for sharpening my woodworking edge tools. As you say, however, it would be slow, and wouldn't really have any advantage over what I am doing at present ... I definitely need powered assistance .

@Nicholas Farr ...Hi Nick thanks for the link ... from what I have read since starting this thread it would seem that coolant is a sine qua non when grinding aluminium, so that rules out the grinding option ...I am not going to have coolant squirting all over the place,.. dry dust I can vacuum away , but it seems that dry grinding is out of the question due to the wheel loading.

So that leads me back to the router option.

Dusty and others have expressed concern ( and rightly so) about the safety aspects of hand -feeding metal into a cutter. I am as keenly aware of safety procedures as anybody ...I spend a goodly part of every working day on my table saw and my router table, and I have evolved procedures for machining both wood and metal (yes, I do cut thin aluminium on the saw) which make the whole operation virtually foolproof. Custom made push blocks are essential , as are efficiently designed hold- downs and feather-boards. If you set everything up right (and I have over 35 years of experience at wood machining), then you won't have any accidents. And, of course, full face protection is absolutely essential.

I will let you know how the routering goes, and thanks again to everybody for their suggestions and advice.

EDIT: 3 more posts since I started writing this post ...have to go out now will reply later ...cheers

Edited By murrmac on 01/03/2014 12:51:57

Living in the countryside I am often rung by carriers seeking directions after SatNav has lost them. Often it occurs to me that the old advice " I wouldn't start from there if ..... " would be appropriate if not helpful.

To some extent this advice applies here. Murrmac has purchased some material to use in a manner previously found satisfactory in terms of time effort and result.

A further batch is different (deficient?) to the extent that a number of dangerous/expensive/toilsome procedures have been proposed and condemned.

I obviously don't know the costs/amount involved but is the best solution to source material nearer in specification to the originally used material rather than the " How do I get round being supplied with X which isn't quite right and needs fudging to work approach" which is often discussed in these columns?

John