Incredible Edger sharpening machine

[Query]

Ah. Now I understand why you might look for wheel alternatives.

So cost/sharpening is one more thing for people who buy sharpening machines to take into account...

I'm sure there are people in these forums who wonder if you think the IE was a good choice, and would be a good choice for others in this forum who are considering buy a powered skate sharpening machine. Is it too early to tell?

It would be a shame for you to stop sharpening. There are so few people with the kind of engineering knowledge and tools you have, or who take the time you do to figure things out, and who post info on their experiments. I hope your customers appreciate how hard you work at doing the best possible job. If you stop, they will soon learn most skate techs don't do that.

You've used Pro-Filer hand tools too, right? How would you compare using the IE vs the Pro-Filer? Have you ever try the old Berghman sharpening hand tools, and could you compared them to the IE? (Yes, I know Pro-Filer and Berghman are no longer made.)

[Kaitsu]

I started figure skates sharpening´s with the machine which is basically bad copy of SSM-2. In that time it was cheapest new power grinder on the market and almost all local hockey teams used same machines. Person whom was "the official and approved" local figure skate sharpener used very similar machine. I was aware of Incredible Edger, and I dreamed about it, but I was too scared to make so huge investment when basically one-one believed that I can learn sharpening. I though that if existing skate tech uses similar machine, even this cheap machine cannot be so bad that I could not sharpen my own daughter skates with it. I used that machine some years. All that time I modified it and to be honest, I used too much money for updating that machine. Only thing I loved in that machine was almost friction-less axis movement (if you don´t use guiding roll in front of grinding wheel). All the rest caused lot of struggling, but I was still make better sharpening´s than existing skate tech. That is mainly because he used 5 minutes to one pair and I did use 1 hour. Shortly summarized, I do have experience also using 6" wheel machine.

Now when I have been using years 3" wheel machine, I would never-ever go back to large wheel machine. Not even the sharpening costs would be lower with large wheel machine. Are the material costs 0.1€ or 1€ per skate pair is irrelevant for me. Even-though IE has many things what could improved, I haven't found better machine from the market (personal opinion). I was considering also Blademaster BRPD1B, but I wanted to have almost friction-less axis movements, like I had on previous machine. Blademaster BRPD1B does have quite small table and I am worried about the friction when skate holder glides on the table. I do know few skate techs whom has purchad lately BRPD1B, so I will try one of those as soon I get change for that.

[Kaitsu]

I have never tried Pro-filer. I would like to try it, but I have kept it too expensive test when I have power grinder. However I have tried Skatemate. That I cannot recommend anyone. I do have also root honing tools from Precision Blade Honing Enterprises. I didn't like them either, so they all are decors among many other tools I have tested. Idea is in principle good, but I had huge problems to keep them running parallel and in the "bottom of hollow". In some day I might 3D print my own version of "hand hone". Even I am able to get pretty nice surface finish, I would still like to find way to improve it even more.

[Query]

3D printing... Interesting idea.

The only 3D printer I ever saw used had an accuracy of 1 or 2 mm - not nearly good enough.

But I know there are much better ones.

Could a competent machinist make a handle (imitating Pro-Filer) with a drill press, plus a saw to make the gap, and then widen the gap with files? Obviously the hard part would be properly aligning and centering the gap on the hole. I guess that would require .0001 or .0002 inch accuracy, to make the edges even. And the hole would have to be just barely larger than the abrasive cylinder - i.e., just barely larger than the ROH - are there good ways to do that, with the tools you already own?

There are a lot of completely junky sharpening tools on the market. If I had started out with one of them, I would have given up.

[Kaitsu]

In previous posts we have wondered how Blademaster 3BW can polish hollow without disturbing the edges. Today I had change to test Blademaster 3BW buffing wheel. Special thanks to Supersharp making this test possible! https://youtu.be/7gVOcWQUCtk

My assumption is that this wheel is designed to 4mm thick blades and wheel thickness would be "the secret" why Blademaster claims that their buffing is not disturbing the edges. Thickness of one the wheel was varying from 3.2 to 3.3mm, when the wheel what you can see in the video had much thicker sections. Thickness of the wheel in the video was varying much more. Wheels does have some axial runout, so we can expect that they will polish wider area than they are thick. However if the polishing is not going all the way to the edges, is it worth of all the extra effort what polishing requires?

First attempt was not any success, but I still try to figure out if I can solve at least some of the issues. IE was suffering from the very high vibrations, especially in the midsection of the blade. This might be an IE related issue. This video however demonstrates very well my earlier comments related to IE sensitivity to the vibrations / resonances.I believe my IE does have also too low rpm for this wheel type and it would partly the root cause why the skate carriage goes to resonance.

I didn't do any weight balancing for the wheel before using it. Even I could feel clear unbalance, I am confident that wheel balancing would not solve this resonance issue. I might be able to solve blade alignment / height adjustment issues, but high vibration / resonance issue in the midsection is probably tricky to be solved. With my experience power grinders suffers easily from this kind of issues. When wheel is not cutting the steel, it starts to "jump". I planning to test Gusto glide and some other "oils", but based on earlier experiences with other wheels, my expectation is that they do not help. Lets see when I have made more tests.

[Query]

Oh.  Never occurred to me that the wheel could be thinner than the blade. It actually makes it sound like a fairly good idea. If you use polishing fluid with the sharpening wheel, and don't push too hard, would you get much benefit from using a polishing wheel at the end?

Maybe Blademaster tested the wheels properties on one of their heavy duty machines, which might have less vibration than the IE, and might also spin at a different speed?

It sounds like your particular wheel wasn't very well made. Maybe Blademaster did their tests on an earlier prototype which was better made than the final product.

[Kaitsu]

Video how to do weight balancing for the Incredible Edger grinding wheel.

https://youtu.be/XuQRszbwzfc?si=Xdacyj6nUqXRnM9l

[Query]

Interesting.

I bet most skate techs don't do this - and if they do, they do it much less carefully! Blademaster's catalog emphasizes doing work as fast as possible, so the skate tech can sharpen more blades per hour, and earn more money per hour.

I guess you trust the hot glue not to come loose, else those washers would fly loose and do damage.

You are also trusting the mounting hardware (e.g., those blue disks) to already be properly balanced - right?

And you are adding weight to one side of the wheel. So you are getting the vertical position of the center of gravity right, but not the other axis - i.e., the rotation axis may not be a principle axis, so it may still tend to wobble some. Does that matter?

I think it would be a lot easier if you could spin balance it on the actual sharpening machine, so it could be balanced in place, with the actual mounting hardware. But the machine isn't designed for that?

[Kaitsu]

Hot glue is reliable if you use butane torch to melt the glue properly. If you use glue gun, most likely you will have flying objects and risk of injury.

My balancers does have deviation / measuring uncertainty. Both of them does have some run-out issues in the shaft and those "blue disks" has also some deviations / centering problems. If I use two different balancers and several measurements in different positions, I do have average results which is surely better than if I would not balance them at all.

Last week I tried Blademaster power grinder which uses these same Blademaster 3" ruby wheels. This experience confirmed me that Incredible Edger is super sensitive for the unbalance / vibrations due its mechanical construction. Blademaster (table top) machine was clearly vibrating, but vibrations were not copied to the blades in same way as in IE.

Grinding wheels does have also axial run-out and I am not able to remove it with my current tooling. I am able to remove only radial run-out by dressing the wheel and making sure that I remove possible clearances, which typically exists between the spindle shaft and wheel center hole. This is the best what I can do at the moment. If someone does have better knowledge, I am open to hear advices.
Also if someone has solution how to balance wheel on the grinding machine, I am happy to hear how it is made. The instruction from the IE user manual is not solution for me.

https://waykenrm.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/measurement-of-axial-and-radial-runout-optimized.jpg

[Query]

I guess you are saying that most of the problem is with Blademaster's wheels. It isn't fair to blame Sid Broadbent (the president of the company that sells Incredible Edger) for imbalances in Blademaster wheels. Especially since Broadbent's company sells wheels too.

Likewise, you are saying Blademaster's wheels work fairly well on Blademaster machines, so it isn't fair to blame Blademaster for failure to work as well as you want on the IE.

It's good you found a way to balance the Blademaster wheels well enough to do what you want. But you had to spend a lot of time at it. Maybe it will be faster next time...

Is it common for people who do metal shop work to try to find ways to compensate for imperfections in their machinery?

I don't have a feel for what works and what doesn't on machine tools. Suppose you put the unmodified wheel on the incredible edger, and turned on the machine. The wheel would vibrate. So you bring a cutting tool up to it and let it shave off a bit of the edge. Would that work? Or would the cutting tool vibrate too?

Or what if you simply grind away the steel on the blade very slowly. Would you still get chatter marks?

[Query]

I was thinking about this a bit more. The "cutting tool" I mentioned would probably have to be the dressing tool.

And you would need to dress it very slowly. The idea would be that the wheel would still shake and wobble - but the outside shape would be stable. That assumes of course that the wheel shakes and wobbles in a consistent way - which I'm not sure of.

You would also have to grind the blade very slowly.

Of course, to an extent, that defeats the reason to use a power tool. Power tools are supposed to be faster than hand tools, at least when making major shape changes.

[Query]

My idea of trying to compensate for the vibration by changing the shape of the outside of the wheel so that the surface that touches the blade is stable, was stupid. Because bearings last much longer and require less maintenance if they don't vibrate. Your idea to actually reduce the vibration rather than merely compensate for it, is of course much better.

I knew an electrician who worked on a lot of motors and pumps. He had learned how to extend their lifetimes from weeks or months to over 30 years, from repair shops, motor manufacturers, and experiment.

E.g., he learned to mount motors and pumps together without detectable vibration: The motor axis the pump axis should exactly align, to eliminate sideways pressure on the shafts and bearings. And there should also be no along-axis pressure between the coupled shafts.

An absence of sideways pressure isn't perfectly possible in a skate sharpener. Because When you sharpen, you also place pressure that is at a almost a right angle to the shaft. But it still makes sense to minimize vibration, and align things as well as you can.

P.S. He also learned other things that helped: in terms of maintenance, voltage (and the best ways of compensating for voltage drops), power conditioning, load balancing, making electrical connections that were more corrosion resistant; and using over-rated heavy duty motors, wires, transformers, and impeller blades. He also learned to correctly select overload breakers and fuses (motor manufacturers use a different breaker rating system from most electrical appliances, so electricians who only read the National Electric Code learn wrong). He specified plumbing changes to reduce pump water pressure. He learned that a wiring diagram provided by a motor control circuit provider omitted a key component.

[marc]

depuis que j'ai vu les vidéo de kaitsu, je ne peux  plus affuter sans equilibrer les meules.
j'ai fait avec un pistolet à colle et oui la rondelle n'a pas tenu, je pouvais me blesser.
alors j'ai enlevé ou creusé avec une meche à béton doucement; cela fragilise la meule mais j'ai pas eu de problème encore.
dans le sens horizontal c'est super, par contre je pense que dans le sens vertical cela doit créer un petit désiquilibre quand même!!

il faut quand même être un peu fou pour équilibrer une meule mais bon c'est mieux que de ne rien faire je trouve!

epuis que j'ai vu la vidéo de kaitsu, je ne peux plus affuter sans équilibrer les meules.
j'ai fait avec un pistolet à colle et oui la rondelle n'a pas tenu, je pouvais me bénir.
alors j'ai enlevé ou creusé avec une meche à béton doucement; cela fragilise la meule mais j'ai pas eu de problème encore.
dans le sens horizontal c'est super, par contre je pense que dans le sens vertical cela doit créer un petit désiquilibre quand même !!

il faut quand même être un peu fou pour équilibrer une meule mais bon c'est mieux que de ne rien faire je trouve