How To Sharpen Carbide Tipped Lathe Tools

Dont Forget the Other Face of the Tool.

How to sharpen carbide tipped lathe tools. It takes a special grinding wheel made of silicon carbide abrasive When I was an apprentice that is all the shop had and we used a lot of brazed on tools in the shop. Touch the tip to the wheel but do not turn on the grinder yet. Assuming youre talking about brazed carbide tools the best way is with a high speed wet diamond wheel mounted on a machine with a table that tilts to establish front and side relief.

The top surface of the tool is often ignored but its as important as the faces. These can be augmented with a variety of jigs to sharpen specialty shapes of lathe tools. My experience started with a high speed grinding wheel and over time I have moved to a moving belt system.

In either instance its important to relieve the shank such that only carbide is ground with the diamond wheel. I talk about some techniques I u. Shown below is what Ive put together to achieve the level of accuracy desired.

In particular the angles must be precise for best cutting action. Ad Easy to Use - Laser Fits in Spindle 4-Axis 00002 resolutn Fast Setup. Carbide tools cant be sharpened with any old knife sharpener though.

Waist with two elbows to reduce the shaking of the lathe tool sharpening. They require a dimond stone because its the only material hard enough to properly sharpen carbide. As I noted in my Sharpening Handbook httpsharpeninghandbookinfo these are not easy to sharpen in a normal manner.

Carbide does not lend itself well to offhand grinding although it can be ground that way. For a while now Ive wanted to have a way to sharpen my metal lathe cutting tools. Adjust the rest as needed so that you achieve the necessary grinding angle for your particular tool.