One way grinding wheel balancer

I have struggled and struggled with my "new" 8" bench grinder and the grinding wheels. I tried buying Norton wheels but they were still so out of round and off balance as scare me to death every time I fired that thing up. I also made new arbors to make them run true and fit tighter on the shaft and made an arbor to mount them in my mill and true them up using a diamond. All for nought.

So with the recent surge of home balancing setups I looked long and hard at every one. They all had beautiful workmanship and thoughtful setups along with great documentation. I learned something from each one, thanks matthemuppet, rossbotics, and JJ.

My problem is I already spent hours and hours on this and was feeling like I just wanted it fixed. So once again I went to U2oob and there was a short vid on balancing a new Tormach surface grinder wheel. With an arbor with three button head Allen screws with washers in a slot that you mounted on a shaft and put on a fixture a lot like the other mentioned setups. By repositioning the screws you balanced the wheel. I wondered if there was something like that for a bench grinder. Sure enough on Amazon there is the Oneway balancing kit.

Oneway Wolverine - ONEWAY #2272 5/8 GRINDING WHEEL BALANCING SYSTEM

At $70 I went for it. It showed up yesterday and like the dings in the reviews mention the "manual" is pretty sparse. I guess they figured us DIY'ers don't really look at them anyway, which is probably true.

The arbors were well made and fit perfectly and the balancing stand while not as fancy and substantial as others I've seen, is simple and gets the job done and is always ready to go. No assembly, no leveling. Just put it on the bench top and ready to go. Two things needed some attention though. The bearings fit the arbor perfectly but were a little stiff because of grease. This proved to provide more damping than optimal IMHO. So rather than pulling the metal seals out and cleaning them out I just put them in some kerosene for a couple of minutes and they freed right up. I also noticed the nylon spacer between the two bearings was thick enough that when installed rubbed on the bearing seals, causing drag. I chamfered the ends so it would only touch the inner race and reinstalled on the fixture. Now the wheels went on forever.

The process for balancing was kinda vague. What I ended doing was slip the arbor without balancing washer onto the wheel and then on the fixture. Let it settle and mark the heavy spot. Install the balancing washer and put one balancing screw across at the top from the heavy spot and the other two at 120 deg on each side. 1/4 turn of the wheel and let it go and start moving the two side weights little by little towards the one that was opposite from the heavy spot. When it wants to not go back to any heavy spot lock em down and good to go.

I found one more thing that I don't know if this was a flaw in machining or if my wheels were skinny but when the balancing washer was threaded all the way and tightened the threaded nose of the arbor stuck out about .070" beyond the balancing washer. I noticed it but not until I tried to tighten the nut on the grinder with the whole assembly and the balancing washer kept coming loose did decide this was getting in the way of my good time. So I pulled each arbor and cut .075 off the threaded nose of each one and then the threaded nose was below the installed surface of the balancing washer. When I installed them back on the grinder they tightened up no more problem.

Bottom line for the first time in 1 1/2yrs of owning this beast it doesn't rattle everything and sound like it's getting ready to leave the planet. Just purrs. :bananadance:

Thanks for the great write up C-Bag! Glad you finally got it all stabilized so you don't have to chase it and bench around the shop or fear for your life. :p Curious, does the kit come with enough for both sides of the grinder...it's a bit vague in the description. That balancer seems like a good simple setup with the shaft & bearings too. Interesting that you had to give it a haircut and not clear why exactly...wheel thickness?

Good info for the tool tip forum, Thanks Again! ~PJ

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Originally Posted by PJs

Interesting that you had to give it a haircut and not clear why exactly...wheel thickness? ~PJ

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Thanks Wiz. You know it's funny that the rest of the kit was so well engineered (and yes there is a right and left arbor/washer setup, one for each side of the grinder) that it seemed weird. I thought maybe I was just not doing something right or had overlooked something. And here they had provided a really nice looking washer that should fit right into the area machined for it in the balancing washer....but the when everything was tight the arbor was sticking out .O75" past the flat for the washer. It works great now and I can get the shaft nut to tighten up where with it sticking out the balancing washer would come loose. I hope this makes sense as there is no labeling of parts but just a simple blow up.

thanks for pointing this out to me, good to have another option and shouldn't be too tricky to machine one either. AFAIK they use a similar system for balancing surface grinder wheels, although in that case they're hubs which the wheel is mounted to and then mounted to the spindle. You can do a "poor mans" version by drilling and tapping holes around the periphery of the arbor then attaching thick washers with screws at the light point.

I also balanced a couple of treadmill motor flywheels using a DIY jig and skateboard bearings, then drilling a divot at the heavy point until the flywheel stopped randomly at all points around its diameter. Worked really well and got rid of a bad vibration on my lathe.

Thanks Matt, I wasn't trying to hyjack your thread. And yes, after seeing your thread and the link you posted I got to poking around onU2oob and it had a short tutorial on balancing a Tormach surface grinder and their arbor looked exactly like the Oneway. Thought, why isn't there one like this for the grinder and voila! Amazon had it.

Thank you C-Bag for the link and mattthemuppet for your ball bearing design. I also have to thank jjr2001 for his advice to the prop balancer improvement for a Grinding Wheel Balancer. I have the "Dubro Products 6mm Drone Quadcopter Prop Balancer" on my Amazon list to buy and modify. All good information.

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Originally Posted by C-Bag

Thanks Matt, I wasn't trying to hyjack your thread. And yes, after seeing your thread and the link you posted I got to poking around onU2oob and it had a short tutorial on balancing a Tormach surface grinder and their arbor looked exactly like the Oneway. Thought, why isn't there one like this for the grinder and voila! Amazon had it.

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no problem at all, the more info the better! Sometimes it's not what you learn but what you remember you've forgotten :)

you're welcome Paul, it was a fun project

Because of the link you provided and your documentation of your design and the mods it totally armed me with enough understanding to fix the shortcomings of the Oneway. One of the interesting things in rossbotics balancing setup was drilling small divots out of the heavy side of his grinding stone to lighten heavy spots. I'd never seen anybody do that as all I'd ever been around was bench grinders. But it set off alarms in my head as I'd always been told in every safety class I've ever taken not to grind on the side of a grinding stone so some how that seemed worse but I couldn't find any more info on it.

So when the Oneway didn't have enough weight in the three button heads to balance my fine grit stone I thought about that divot fix but decided to go with a longer button head and an extra washer. I had to only use that on one and it was the one directly across from the heavy side.