Welding Tips and Tricks

I thought I would share my current setup for inexpensive but very good tungsten grinding. In the past I have used bench grinders with various wheels, and a 1/4" die grinder with a small cheap but very effective diamond wheel from Harbor Freight. The former bench grinder required a dedicated wheel that grooved quickly, the latter worked well but was awkward to hold and grind. I eventually tried Harbor Freight's saw blade sharpening machine item No.96687 ($49) before typical 20% discount. I tossed all the misc. blade sharpening apparatus and just bolted the motor assembly with the included diamond wheel to my welding table with the machine's base. This setup has been nothing but great. The motor is very quiet and smooth, the 4" diamond wheel grinds very fast, and you can easily pic a tip angle while resting your tungsten on the wheel guard. Also, I have seen no wear whatsoever on the wheel. Replacement blades are $10 if I ever need one vs. a small fortune for replacement wheels on a $350+ dedicated grinder. I know, its cheap Harbor Freight asian product, but I have seen no issues with it. Heck, at that price it is disposable should it ever fail. Below are a couple of links to pics of the setup.

http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u49 ... 7ribsv.jpg

http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u49 ... o2yj7b.jpg

Seen a few people post about this over the years. Seems like a pretty good deal. I use the harbor freight 3" mini bench grinder with the gray buffing/polishing wheel to get a near mirror finish.