Knifemaking Tuesdays Week 56 - Grinder part 1 Media

This Tuesday we started working on our new 2x72" belt grinder! There are a lot of aluminum plates and brackets to machine, some can be drilled manually and others should be CNC machined, so we did a bit of both for this video. Erik took the reins and did most of the work, getting some good progress done on the grinder. For the CNC portion we used a high speed milling technique so that we could cut 0.48" deep in one pass, using a LakeShore Carbide 2 flute uncoated endmill. It throws nice long shiny chips really far! We held the aluminum piece down on our VacMagic, but we needed a bit more clamping force because the tool paths were pretty aggressive, so we simply added a few extra clamps. Once it was done Erik simply cleaned up the holes and sanded the edges.

For part 2 we'll hopefully get more of the parts made and start putting them together so that it begins to resemble an actual grinder.