my bench grinder is all gunked up. a few years ago i was dumb and grinded some plastic which melted into the pores and recently some aluminum which also embeded in the wheel. i tried torching the wheel to melt it with minimal luck. what should i do to clean it?
get a stone dressing wheel, its a handle with little star like wheels and you use it to renew the ginding surface of your stone.
Those wheels can take a hefty cut out of the wheels. You can also find dressing stones that work well but take a steady hand to get the wheel nice and square
McMaster-Carr has them but I can't figure out how to link to the pages in their catalog. either search on "grinder wheel dresser" or go to pages 2483 and 2484 in the online catalog to see examples of what we're talking about. McMaster is also a good place to order from if you can't find anything locally
http://www.mcmaster.com/
Well, it's not the whole page, but hey....
Page 2483 (http://www.mcmaster.com/ctlg/DisplCtlgPage.asp?ReqTyp=CATALOG&CtlgPgNbr=2483&CtlgEdition=&RelatedCtlgPgs=2483,2484&sesnextrep=433677269939958&ScreenWidth=1280&McMMainWidth=819&ToolsetID=ToolMultiPageNav&ToolsetAct=)
Page 2484 (http://www.mcmaster.com/ctlg/DisplCtlgPage.asp?ReqTyp=CATALOG&CtlgPgNbr=2484&CtlgEdition=&RelatedCtlgPgs=2483,2484&sesnextrep=433677269939958&ScreenWidth=1280&McMMainWidth=819&ToolsetID=ToolMultiPageNav&ToolsetAct=)[/list:u]
Time for a new wheel. If you heated it with a torch then you've destroyed the adhesive that bonds the wheel together. It may run fine now, but chances are good that it will fly apart later. A reasonable chunk of grinding wheel will come at you with about the same amount of force as a deer slug.
An aquaintance was killed by an exploding instrument gyro while screwing around at work. One chunk took his head off, while the rest went through a block wall and through the office next door where it imbedded in a file cabinet. The gyro was solid brass, about 4" in diameter. The chunk that hit him was roughly 1lb, and moving at 600 ft/sec.
Just a friendly warning. ;)
Oh my God is that a real story?! that's terrible...
Weazel you better get rid of that thing now!