CBN wheels and woodcraft grinder

[Morey St. Denis]

Cliff, your information looks to be ahead of any formal product launch specifications. No mention of this variation could I find on the website... Will those bare turned aluminum wheels get hardcoat anodized? How is the CBN bonded to the substrate? Nickel electroplating, such as typically used with a steel disk, can be problematic over aluminum...

[Stephen Massman]

I did have some time last night to try the grinder with no wheels. It did take a couple seconds of churning sounds to actually get the shaft to rotate after flipping the ON switch. Once the shaft was spinning it was very quick to come to full speed. I don't know much about electronics and motors, but that sounds like a bad capacitor. I tried to take the left and right side motor housing off but couldn't get them to come off. After removing the four screws on each side, I was able to spin the side motor housings but could not get them to come loose enough to pull them off.

I did call Woodcraft yesterday and the tech support person made it sound like the grinder should be trashed. They did offer me a discount on the Rikon slow speed grinder, which I did take them up on and got a discount on shipping. I asked the tech if the Rikon would be able to handle the two CBN wheels and he said yes with no issues.

The Rikon grinder is on back order until middle of March, so it would be nice to possibly find a solution for my current woodcraft grinder. I can go to the local Grainger and see if they carry a capacitor and see if that helps. But the fact the smoke was coming out of the motor housing leads me to think it isn't capacitor related.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Steve