[JPB123]

Posted under products page on Tormach Home page

[rbjem]

I'll just put this here...

[jake hoback]

damn you Tormach!!! damn you, why do you want all of my money good bye old brown and sharpe 5x10

[RTP_Burnsville]

I would not be in a hurry to sell that 'old' grinder based on the development time for the lathe.... You should have a good 3-4 years to save your change.

[jake hoback]

takes time to make a good product and RD it. Ill wait

[Tbkahuna]

I saw the mention of this on their website a few weeks ago. I signed up for the email list for updates on the development. About a week ago I got the first update email with the video. The message says that it will be available for sale later this year. Here is part of the message.

"Thank you for subscribing to the Tormach PSG 612 Surface Grinder new product update list! The PSG 612 is a semi-automated surface grinder for the small metal shop. We'll be sending out periodic progress updates until the launch of this product for sale later this year. Here's a video sneak peek at the PSG 612 in action."

[Peter Neill]

Although I'm a fan of my PCNC 1100, I can see absolutely nothing there to get even a teensy bit excited about.
Slow, small, and looks crudely finished.
My J&S 540 surface grinder - which was designed in 1941 - automatically traverses and reverses more than twice as fast as that, and can produce an almost mirror finish whilst setting - and grinding - to 0.00005" . And no that's not a typo.

The new Lathe looks good, this appears to be a bit of badge engineering.

[SomeWhatLost]

I don't get this...
admittedly I am no machinist, nor do I play one on TV...
but why would I want to grind a surface flat when I can just mill it flat on my mill?
is grinding somehow better?
does this somehow compensate for the grinding wheel wear?

NOTE: due to the fact that sometimes with forum posts, there can be unintended sarcasm or arrogance implied or read into a post... I just want to point out that I only meant for there to be ignorance in this post as I do not know the answers, and hopefully someone will enlighten me...

[Dylwad]

I don't get this...
admittedly I am no machinist, nor do I play one on TV...
but why would I want to grind a surface flat when I can just mill it flat on my mill?
is grinding somehow better?
does this somehow compensate for the grinding wheel wear?

NOTE: due to the fact that sometimes with forum posts, there can be unintended sarcasm or arrogance implied or read into a post... I just want to point out that I only meant for there to be ignorance in this post as I do not know the answers, and hopefully someone will enlighten me...

Some jobs and applications call for higher surface finish than can be achieved by milling.

http://www.engineershandbook.com/Tab...eroughness.htm

Better lathe and mill sliding surfaces are ground after they are milled.

Sent from tapatalk

[tikka308]

FYI, I just received a Tormach Surface Grinder and put up a quick video. Due to lack of experience surface grinding, I'm not able to give a proper comparison or critique, but nevertheless thought folks may like seeing one in the wild. I take a few test cuts on a block of 4140. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRFEe3RRHoo


UPDATE: to be clear: this is me, someone who has no surface grinding experience, going through first-steps / first-impressions. If you're an experienced grinder guy who wants to chime in or offer any input, I'm all ears - but don't watch this video and ***** because of inexperience, overly cautious operation, etc. This video isn't listed as, nor intended to be, any type of a "tutorial" video on how to grind. It's a guy who is sharing his new/learning experience.

[quapman]

Why is the Z feed handle on the wrong (left) side?

[tikka308]

Tormach is using an existing design that you'll see other asian-import companies use (e.g. grizzly). While I'd like to "defend" tormach and say the overall quality is higher due to on-sight supervision, QC, etc, I cannot verify that first-hand. They DO do that with their CNC mills. But that's why the Z-feed is where it is - for better or worse

[Steve Seebold]

FYI, I just received a Tormach Surface Grinder and put up a quick video. Due to lack of experience surface grinding, I'm not able to give a proper comparison or critique, but nevertheless thought folks may like seeing one in the wild. I take a few test cuts on a block of 4140. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRFEe3RRHoo

Wow. Sorry, but this is absolutely the WRONG guy to be giving a demo on this machine. He admits in the beginning that he has no idea what he is doing and as the video progresses, he proves it.

The set up to grind that piece of 4140 should have taken one minute or less. The 12 minutes it took in the video would be enough time to grind all 6 sides of the block and still have some time left over.

Before you grind a block like that, I would have machined it close to size (within .010 of finish size) then go to the grinder to finish it.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

The Tormach White Paper on the surface grinder makes it clear they basically added motion control to an off-the-shelf manual machine. That base machine is obviously the same one sold by Grizzly.

What strikes me as odd about this machine is I just don't see much of a market for something like this - surface grinding is a very rarely-used operation, compared to milling, turning, etc.

What is the price of this machine? The Grizzly manual machine is $1999, so I'm guessing this one is perhaps $4K? Basically zero information on the Tormach website.

Regards,
Ray L.

[tikka308]

Steve - yes, I absolutely proved exactly what I said - I have never used one of these before! And guess what - I bet Tormach has many customers (present for their CNC Mill, and future customers for their lathe and this grinder) that are newcomers.

No doubt, speed will increase with time. I have no problem taking the time it took to safely set up the part.

[tikka308]

Ray - i agree, it's not clear to me this will be as big a commercial success. Certainly not the same audience size as mill's (or lathes). We'll see. I would guess Tormach did their homework re: market size and knows it's small - but that doesn't mean there aren't people who will want this.

A lot of folks say buy a old, used, better made (e.g. USA) machine - I could agree more (and you could even convert it to CNC) - but remember, some people (and, more importantly, small companies) may be interested in this but various reasons/policies prevent them from risking (or restoring) used/old equipment.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Ray - i agree, it's not clear to me this will be as big a commercial success. Certainly not the same audience size as mill's (or lathes). We'll seed. I would guess Tormach did their homework re: market size and knows it's small - but that doesn't mean there aren't people who will want this.

A lot of folks say buy a old, used, better made (e.g. USA) machine - I could agree more (and you could even convert it to CNC) - but remember, some people (and, more importantly, small companies) may be interested in this but various reasons/policies prevent them from risking (or restoring) used/old equipment.

So did you buy yours, or are you a beta tester? If bought, what was the price?

Regards,
Ray L.

[tikka308]

Beta.

[waltpermenter]

Ray - i agree, it's not clear to me this will be as big a commercial success. Certainly not the same audience size as mill's (or lathes). We'll seed. I would guess Tormach did their homework re: market size and knows it's small - but that doesn't mean there aren't people who will want this.

yes i'm sure tormach knows not everyone is limited in experience with anything other than milling aluminum, they know plenty of us do work with steels and being able to regrind our own/others punches and dies etc. would be a real benefit.
walt

[SpruTormaCam]

tikka308

Thanks for taking the time to make the video. It answers a lot of questions of functionality and operation.



Mark...