Sunday, July 30, 2017

Thin Cut-Off Wheels In 4 1/2" Angle Grinders


I picked up one of Princess Auto's 0.045" thick depressed centre cut-off wheels[1] for a 4 1/2" angle grinder recently. I had a couple of carriage bolt ends on a carport post repair that needed shortening. The cut-off wheel worked nicely.


But I ran into a little snag with the first angle grinder that I tried to use with the cut-off wheel. The wheel clamping arrangement on my old Black & Decker machine wouldn't close down on such a thin wheel. Here's a view of the Black & Decker's hub.


When assembled, the minimum space between the two hub halves is about 0.057". I'd say that that hub is meant for wheels no thinner than 1/16" (0.0625"). To use a 0.045" thick wheel with that hub, I'd have had to find or fabricate a suitable washer to take up the space.

I have another angle grinder, so I turned to it to see if it would accept a very thin wheel.

On the face of things, it appeared that that angle grinder wasn't meant to accept any wheel thinner than 1/8". But by flipping over the outer hub half, I was able to firmly clamp the very thin wheel, like so.


So, be aware that if you mean to use very thin cut-off wheels in your 4 1/2" angle grinder, you may be in for a spot of fiddling to get the tool to work for you.

* * *

Note:

[1] Princess Auto P/N 8423030.

# # #


# # #



No comments:

Post a Comment