David Delo
10-01-2015, 9:45 PM
Been wanting to upgrade my Delta 23-197 grinder for awhile but couldn't justify a Baldor and missed out on the Steel City closeout. Had the Delta 23-199 and liked that unit but it took a dump and replaced it with the 197. Never satisfied with the 197. Took awhile to get up to speed, ran hot all the time and didn't have much of a shaft shoulder for the CBN hub to rest against. In fairness to Delta, I don't think they were ever designed for the heavier weights of the CBN wheel.
Saw the ad in the latest Woodcraft flyer for this new Rikon 8" model and ended up speaking with Rikon directly to get a few questions answered abour the shaft shoulder and shaft length to accept CBN wheels with wider hubs like I have from Ken at WTW. Long story short, every feature I was looking to address, this unit was designed to solve.
Pros:
1 HP starts 2 CBN wheels to full rpm in less that 2 seconds.
I let the motor run for a good 5 minutes and didn't notice any heat build up. The Delta would have been almost too hot to touch.
My CBN wheels uses 3 washers (1-flat on the inside) and 2-spherical washers on the outside of the hub for proper wheel alignment. Couldn't use all 3 on the Delta (not enough shaft length) but the Rikon allows all 3 with full thread engagement for the shaft nut.
Cons:
Kind of a PITA if your planning on using a wolverine jig because the shaft centerline is almost 1" higer than the Delta that was a breeze to setup. Needed to raise the the platforms up 7/8" to get where they needed to be and of course, I didn't have any pieces that were big enough and right thickness so I've got a couple pieces stacked.
The other con is you can't take off the hard rubber feet. The bottom cover is held in place with those feet. I took them off and used shorter screws but there's another screw in the center of the bottom cover that holds the start capacitor in place and that screw sticks out below the level of the 4 corners of the casting.....so the unit won't sit level.
Even with all of that screwing around, I'll give this unit a big thumbs up performance wise. Really like the almost instant full rpm's.
322578
The old cover nut
322579
Not much of a shaft shoulder
322580
Problem solved with this one
322581
Plenty of room on this shaft
322583
I'll make a nicer platform arrangement later but good enough to get up and running right now with the scraps I had on hand.
322582
Saw the ad in the latest Woodcraft flyer for this new Rikon 8" model and ended up speaking with Rikon directly to get a few questions answered abour the shaft shoulder and shaft length to accept CBN wheels with wider hubs like I have from Ken at WTW. Long story short, every feature I was looking to address, this unit was designed to solve.
Pros:
1 HP starts 2 CBN wheels to full rpm in less that 2 seconds.
I let the motor run for a good 5 minutes and didn't notice any heat build up. The Delta would have been almost too hot to touch.
My CBN wheels uses 3 washers (1-flat on the inside) and 2-spherical washers on the outside of the hub for proper wheel alignment. Couldn't use all 3 on the Delta (not enough shaft length) but the Rikon allows all 3 with full thread engagement for the shaft nut.
Cons:
Kind of a PITA if your planning on using a wolverine jig because the shaft centerline is almost 1" higer than the Delta that was a breeze to setup. Needed to raise the the platforms up 7/8" to get where they needed to be and of course, I didn't have any pieces that were big enough and right thickness so I've got a couple pieces stacked.
The other con is you can't take off the hard rubber feet. The bottom cover is held in place with those feet. I took them off and used shorter screws but there's another screw in the center of the bottom cover that holds the start capacitor in place and that screw sticks out below the level of the 4 corners of the casting.....so the unit won't sit level.
Even with all of that screwing around, I'll give this unit a big thumbs up performance wise. Really like the almost instant full rpm's.
322578
The old cover nut
322579
Not much of a shaft shoulder
322580
Problem solved with this one
322581
Plenty of room on this shaft
322583
I'll make a nicer platform arrangement later but good enough to get up and running right now with the scraps I had on hand.
322582