A Better 3D-Printed Grinding Wheel Balancer

Today we're designing and 3D-printing a couple of different grinding wheel balancers for the surface grinder. The Du-Bro prop balancer I used last week worked okay, but I think we can do better.
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Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

00:00 Intro
00:58 Designing the bearing balancer
06:56 Assembling the bearing balancer
10:04 Tormach balancing arbor
11:41 Making an arbor nut
12:36 Testing the bearing balancer
14:14 Designing a rail balancer
16:34 Making the rails on the lathe
17:33 Assembling the rail balancer
19:21 Balancing the grinding wheel
24:24 Grinding some test parts
27:33 Inspecting the finish
29:08 Conclusions

[kensherwin]

In my decades in the shop, one thing I've learned. There is no horse so dead that it can't stand one more beating. We look forward with anticipation the next balancer video.

[summerforever]

You knew before you made the first video that you are not going to buy a expensive balancer!
3D printing is something else!!!

[spencerr]

One tip for final balancing, if you give the wheel a little bit of starting motion and watch where it settles each time starting in different positions this can help reduce the influence of starting static friction. This can also help identify if there is an issue in your adjustment of level, or bend in the rails of your balancer.

[louisnoel]

Great! As a mechanical engineer, I really enjoy seeing your approaches to mechanical design with these types of projects and walkthroughs. One of the many reasons you have one of my favorite channels. Congrats on 100k recently too 👏

[BrilliantDesignOnline]

Watching your 3D printed parts materialize; we TOTALLY _never_ do that. 3D printers are the new pen plotters. We never watched those either because we were always all yelled at to go back to our desks and get back to work.

[melgross]

I have to say that you’re really pretty adept with 3D printing.

The bad thing about using the Knipex pliers (I use them too for things I “shouldn’t”) is that you’ll get complaints about your using them.

[michaelkalbfleisch]

Using the Knipex pliers to take off the nuts of the wheel is perfectly fine! Since they have parallel jaws that tighten the more you grip on a fastener they are better that wrenches for this task. I used them on aircraft hydraulic “B” nuts since any damage to the nut would require the complete replacement of the line as well as the nut..

[cmputer]

I just got an X1 Carbon and I definitely sit and watch it. Sometimes I sit next to the printer and watch the print on the video feed in the app because I’m insane.

Really nice balancers, now that you know they work you can make them out of metal. I think that horse still has a pulse.

[Enjoymentboy]

I'm no machinist, engineer or professional by any means. Just a tinkerer. But there is something, to me, that is so incredibly pleasing about using tools to make a tool that makes other tools work better.

[morilamorila]

Hello. im currently an apprientice in machining in Germany. I think i have a solution to your problem. Our most recent toppic was: Cooling solutions. Especialy Mistcooling. We could proof, that while cutting with "an undefined cutting geometry" (Grinding, honing and lapping) mistcooling worsens the surface quality. Floodcooling or dry Air resulted in the best surfaces. The Grindingwheel nooks and holes get "Sticky" from mistcoolant and the super fine metal partikles gets stuck in there. but only the super super fine ones. You can only realy seee them in a microscope. Aditional do NEVER NEVER EVER start your wet-cooling with a stationary grindingwheel. The wheel is pourus like a sponge, coolant seeps (if stationary) on one side in, and throws your perfect balance WAY of. In Germany we (of course) have laws of safety for machinists, and one of it is: Cooling only AFTER spinning. Please be prepared, if you try to aircool your grinder, it can create a fire hazard

[danl.]

I'm not a grinder and never used that. But I was surprised when after you balanced that wheel so nicely, you dressed the wheel, and didn't balance again. My thinking is that you balanced "elliptical" wheel. But now that you've dressed it, you removed that weight from the extra material that you've dressed out.

It would have been really interesting to put the wheel back on the balancer to see the effect of the dressing on the balance.


Also would have been super interesting to see the difference, if any, of the grind surface quality between your last result and the result of re-balancing the wheel after the dressing.

[wolfhausindustries]

I recently just bought my first surface grinder, an older Manual 618 Okamoto. Currently trying to tool it up for everything I have planned for it. Bc of the limited space a my home shop I was able to convince my boss at my day job to let me install the machine up there, which was super cool on his part, but it is def having an effect on the time its taking for getting everything set up and operational in the way I want by not having it at my disposal 24/7. A couple of day ago though, I finished all the CAD work and literally just ordered the materials I'll need (I'm a "if it's made from metal, it will be better or at least stronger" kinda guy, regardless of alloy chosen) to make my own wheel balancer based off of the Tormach-style design (but using low carbon steel for the body rather than cast iron). Still contemplating whether I want to weld the body/base of the balancer together or just use fasteners for that, either way, it's pretty ironic to see you putting out videos right now for a similar project. Cool stuff man. Appreciate getting to learn from your efforts for my own stuff.

[dylanwilliams]

You have become my favorite maker/ machinist on the YouTubes. Thanks for your great content and your thoughtful designs.

[Disneymkvii]

WOW! Night and day difference! I'm so glad you chose to chase that little extra balance. Really made a huge difference and gives me motivation to do the same.

[leathermanTK]

Great Video. Please take some care with the sparks entering the dust bag of the ShopVac. Any spark in the dust may cause a smolder and ignite sometime later when youre away from the shop. You would, of course, have a couple of smoke detectors in the shop but just a safety tip. cheers from NZ

[mumblbeebee]

Your channel is simply Youtube Gold - thank you!
Watching 3D printing is the modern equivalent of watching disk defrag, I guess ;)

[JonathanRockway]

I didn't read the comments about the Knipex pliers on the last video, but I used to be very anti-adjustable-wrench and insisted on using the exact right size for everything. I got some of the Knipex plier wrench things at the recommendation of this channel and they're pretty much the only tool I use now. They just work great for pretty much everything. Maybe people complaining have used different types of pliers and the results were bad (the key point is that these pliers have parallel gripping surfaces), but these are great. You can get a lot of torque on the fastener and the jaws don't chew them up or anything. Would buy again.

[MachiningandMicrowaves]

It's 45 years since I used a surface grinder, but I think the one I used had some form of dynamic balance checker that you could use to manage vibrations caused by rocking imbalances that were not detectable on static balancers. We were told taught to dress a new wheel after an initial static balance, then dress it again and rebalance it. That grinder also had very nice air bearings. Once I get my new CNC machine installed, I need a grinder!

[noahkatz]

Very nice, James.

The sensitivity of the bearing balancer can be improved by embedding them in larger diameter wheels.

The greater radius will lessen the effect of surface imperfections, as well as reduce the effective friction torque of the bearings.

I once had a balancer that had the bearings in 3" dia. knife-edged steel wheels.

[JohannSwart_JWS]

Hi James. My experiments with this same thing ended up with large, skinny brass wheels (85 mm dia, 2.5 mm thick), with tiny bearings from hard drives press fit into their centres. The bearings had their grease covers removed, and they were then flushed out with acetone, then alcohol, and air-hose dried. The wheels have a blunt knife edge (like a butter knife). This all resulted in extrememly low friction and inertia, which worked well for me. The wheels can also be weight relieved on the lathe if required, which will help for inertia. Thumbs up!