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Ed Caffrey's Workshop Talk to Ed Caffrey ... The Montana Bladesmith! Tips, tricks and more from an ABS Mastersmith.

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  #1  
Old 06-10-2014, 03:06 AM
Jeremy Jeremy is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Idaho
Posts: 234
Wet grinding setup

I got inspired by some recent wet grinding threads and decided to give it a go. I must say, I'm really looking forward to less dust in my small work area. After doing some research, I decided to go with a pump rather than gravity feed. I picked up a Ryobi wet saw pump at the big box home store and a couple fittings. The guy there was helpful and gave me a couple suggestions. I wanted to be able to adjust the flow without reaching into the bucket of water to turn the little dial. I had a bunch of drip line left over from doing sprinkler stuff in the back yard. Got a little needle valve thing and a little pack with "delrin sleeves" to replace the brass ones in the compression valve (they can cut into the plastic hose).




Replace the little sleeves and tighten everything up.




The little elbow that plugs into the pump posed a problem after opening everything... It was a ways bigger than the drip line, but not big enough for the line to fit inside. I'm sure there's a couple specific adapters that would allow the fit to be just right, but I'm fairly impatient. So...I hunted around the garage and found some fittings, tube, and zip ties. A little time and a bit of filing, and things were working just right.




After testing it all out (and it actually worked), I got it out to the grinder. I zip tied it all together and plugged it in.




I had to help out the pump just a touch, but once it made it all the way up from the floor, it was flowing just fine.




Turned it down and it went to a trickle. Looks like it should work just fine .




I need to work on the mounting of it onto the belt, but that shouldn't be too difficult. Glad I ran into the other threads about this.


Jeremy
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  #2  
Old 06-10-2014, 10:49 AM
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Icho Icho is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Windsor, Ontario, Canada
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I've thought about doing something like this. Can't wait to see how it works out for you. Will you be making up some kind of guarding to keep the water under control?
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  #3  
Old 06-10-2014, 07:45 PM
Jeremy Jeremy is offline
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Location: Idaho
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I'm going to try keeping the typhoon to a minimum . From the sounds of it, there really needs to be very little water to make things effective and I plan to use as little as is needed. I have a few thoughts for testing how I want to get the water on the belt and also plan to make a little guard for the top wheel of the platen, hopefully out of plexi glass. Add on some angle iron for an attachment point and some rare earth magnets and curve it around the wheel with my heat gun. Should be an "easy" way to keep the water directed where I want it and not on me and easily moved around for easy belt changes. Going to bend up some sheet metal for a catch tray under the grinder and up the wall behind. Then it'll just be a matter of periodically cleaning out the collected gunk.

I'm sure it'll take some fiddling around to make it all work, but really looking forward to the idea of a lot less dust floating all over. Especially from some Micarta or G10. I'll still be wearing a respirator, but less dust to me is always a good thing. We'll see how it all turns out.

Jeremy
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Old 06-11-2014, 01:37 AM
cdent cdent is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: aiea, hi
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Just a thought, because it'll work dry. You can spring clamp any old fairly stiff scrap sheet plastic to the back of your slack bucket. Set it towards the inside of the bucket, maybe eight, ten inches wide, doesn't matter. Raise it up centered on the running belt, and let the belt cut into it a bit, then clamp it in place so it stays just ticking the belt.

Anyway, hardly any grit follows the belt around, and gets steered down towards the bucket. It just came to mind if you have trouble catching the water before it goes round and sprays. I never tried it with water, but it might take a whole two minutes and should be free to try. You could also sit the bucket on a shelf or stand to bring it up closer to the belt than hanging by the handle allows for.

You're lucky to have that low humidity, are you sure you want the rust. I wanna see a picture of you grinding in rain gear. Probably can't make it out by Steve's place myself this time around. I would really miss it though, no doubt about it.

Best of luck with it, Craig
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  #5  
Old 06-11-2014, 04:55 AM
Jeremy Jeremy is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Idaho
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That's a great idea about steering the gunk down and into the bucket, Craig. I may just steal that . I'll be curious how much of a rust problem this will cause. It does happen to be a rather dry climate here, so that's gotta help. The whole grinder frame is painted with rustoleum and it is a small amount of water that I'll be using. The guys who I've chatted with about wet grinding do seem to love it. If the worst happens and I hate it, the whole endeavor was a rather cheap one, at least.

Jeremy
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  #6  
Old 06-22-2014, 10:39 AM
Jeremy Jeremy is offline
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I think it's finished...mostly. I did some testing and checking and it appears like things will work. I know I'll be fine tuning as things go along, but it seems that it at least works relatively well at the moment. I got some Lexan from the big box store, cut it to size, then used my heat gun to get things warm. Bent it around the top wheel above the platen and let it cool. Bent up some flat bar, drilled holes in both, and bolted them together. I ground down the heads that were sticking through so I could position the guard close to the belt. I used rare earth magnets to hold the bar to the platen and it makes it easy to adjust the angle/position of it. (Noticed later the nuts were vibrating off the bolts, so I added some permanent thread lock to them.)






I used more flat bar and magnets on the tension bar with the drip line. Then I bent up some flashing I had for the gutter to catch any water/spray, since it was sitting around and I also had access to a metal break to make things pretty easy. I drilled a hole in the flat bar to put the drip line through and zip tied the end of the tube to "plug" it. I did some previous testing before cutting the drip line shorter to see what would work. I used some little drill bits and pin vises to put in some holes for the water to drip through. Just a little twist of the valve on and off and it controls the flow. A little fiddling with the Lexan shield and it keeps the water going where I want it. I found out when I position it close enough to the belt, I can actually see the water it catches from flying off gathering in a wide "drop" between the belt and the bottom edge of the Lexan before falling down the face of the platen.

It looks like the metal splash guard is out of alignment, but it's just the angle of the photos.







This was a fairly old/dull belt and when I started grinding to see how it did, things still heated up, though not as quickly as before. Guessing a sharp belt that actually cut vs this one would probably stay cool longer. At a minimum, though the dust will be kept down which is huge for me and my little shop.

Thanks to everyone for great advice and help. There's no way I'd have thought to try something like this without ideas from others.


Jeremy
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  #7  
Old 06-22-2014, 12:16 PM
cdent cdent is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: aiea, hi
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Hey Jeremy. Since it's bolted on anyway, maybe you might move the water outlet up to the plexiglass shield. Maybe less water can come off the belt on its way to the top platen wheel. Thanks for the follow up pictures.

Take care, Craig
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  #8  
Old 06-22-2014, 07:14 PM
Jeremy Jeremy is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Idaho
Posts: 234
I moved the water to various locations as I did the testing and it didn't seem to make much difference, at least on my particular setup. I'm sure there will be some more tweaks along the way and wet grinding isn't for everyone, but I'm really liking the lack of metal dust all over . Take care, Craig. I look forward to the next time I get to see you.

Jeremy
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angle, back, belt, brass, cleaning, coat, easy, g10, grinder, grinding, guard, gun, heat, home, iron, made, make, making, metal, micarta, plastic, problem, store, tools, wheels


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