Endmill and Slot Drill grinding services in the uk

Hello,

I hope the title is self explanatory, I know there may be a lot of people saying it isn't worth it but if I've got endmills/drills worth £10 each surely I've got to be saving something. I don't like throwing stuff away anyway.

Is there any grinding service that will grind a handful of carbide/hss cutting tools for a few bob?

Michael W

A firm I used to work for had a full toolroom including cutter making and sharpening but found it more economical to get Cromwell Tools to resharpen standard endmills and slotmills.

Brian

Update, I've just found a service called raynor tools that might hold some promise, i'll phone them at some point, it seems to fit the description of endmills, which is specifically the cutters I want reground.

Thanks for your thoughts Brian,

Michael W

Michael

You are an optimist - I don't know any business that will do anything " for a few bob" these days! Our friends at ARC sell a futuristic looking machine to do the job ... but you would need to be sharpening a lot of cutters to recoup the cost!

You can bring new life to cutters by lightly grinding the ends on your bench grinder - maybe use these for roughing out and keep your "Newer" ones for finishing.

Norman

You could try making the attatchment for Harald Halls grinding table.

There's a chap who sometimes advertises on Homeworkshop offering a cutter sharpening service, with the proceeds going to charity. Don't have any details for him unfortunately, but I'm sure someone will have them.

For cutters that have high replacement costs, I send mine to ABBCO in Nottingham.  They do however charge realistically for what they do.

Edited By KWIL on 20/01/2017 17:20:06

Are there any retired Tool and Cutter grinders that are on the forum who would like to earn a few quid? Looks like there could be quite a lot of part time work there.
BobH

There is a tool and cutter grinding business in Bedford that quoted me £15 to sharpen a 1" end mill about twelve months ago. After I put the phone down and stopped laughing I bought myself a cheap second hand T&C grinder and did it (and others) myself.

Rik

It may be that the only realistic option is to make my own T+C fixture, I can't afford £15 per endmill, I might as well throw them out and buy new'uns at that price.

Michael W

I don't know whether anyone out there is familiar with this dodge, which I have to good effect. We all know about keeping your newest cutter for your finish cut, thus prolonging its life, but instead of struggling with dull cutters to hog material off you can try this. Use a ripper cutter but keep it keen by off-hand grinding along the inside of the flutes with a suitably thin grinding wheel. The ends can be off-hand ground as normal.

Roy.M

No doubt they were laughing too!

I know you are the ace bargain hunter, but with setup and knock down that's going to tie someone up for a chunk of time when they could be getting a bigger job out the door. How much do you think it costs to equip and, staff and run a jobbing engineering shop? Ask them to sharpen 100 identical end mills and you might get a much better unit price.

I have to buy some custom sheets of foam, and the 'one off tooling charge' is £61 (no doubt plus VAT). So one foam is perfectly doable, but would cost me about £63. Luckily I need a hefty batch.

By the tme your 4 flute endmill needs the tips grinding if it has been used for side cutting then the flutes will also need sharpening, unfortunately this probably means cost of sharpening is prohibitive, certainly with the smaller sizes of HSS cutters.

Emgee

I am fortunate enough to have a friend with a cutter grinder, I drop into his place a couple of times a year and grind about 40 various size end mills/slot drills. As I don't use the machine often enough to get quicker this takes me around 6 hours. With coffee's and chat of course.

We all complain that the cost of having milling cutters sharpened is expensive but these firms have to cover their running and equipment costs. The question you have to ask is: How much would you charge to sharpen a cutter if you were doing it as a commercial business ? The only cheap way to do it is to purchase your own (expensive) tool and cutter grinder or build your own.

Paul.

So at an average hourly labour cost of say £45 per hour your £15 equates to twenty minutes.

Now would you open a package, set a machine up, sharpen the cutter, repackage it and take it to the post office in 20 minutes.

From the flyleaf of Neville Shutes "Trustee from the Tool room."

An engineer is a man who can do for five bob what any bloody fool can do for a quid.
Definition: origin unknown

In the final printing it was changed to:-

An engineer is a man who can do for five bob what any bloody fool can do for a quid.

A Model Engineer is a man who expects everything for nothing.

Edited By John Stevenson on 20/01/2017 21:35:17

VERY WELL SAID that man

You can put together an effective cutter grinder using off the shelf parts:- X-Y Table, Myford Vertical Slide, and a Bench grinder, to index the cutter you can use Stevenson Blocks or cobble together your own fixture using a ER collett holder. Thats what I did and I kept the cost down by using second hand parts off ebay.

I've shown this before but for thos of you who missed it her it is in action.