Just curious as to how often diamond wheels need to be changed. Not cutting any glass and next to no poly lenses. Seems after about 3 months the wheels have trouble keeping a nice finish. Called for a technician to service the machine and after about a week the finish is crappy again. I would hate to think the wheels are finished in such a short time.
Does anyone know approximate number of cycles before you should replace the wheels?
What you need to do is "stick" your wheels. There are two colors (and grits) of dressing sticks, brown is rough for use with a roughing wheel and white is better for the V-bevel wheel. Get some from, well about any optical supplies house,soak them in water, run your wheel up to speed, turn off the machine and stop the wheels with the brown stick on the flat wheel. Do this three or four times. Then run the wheels up to speed, soak the white stick and apply it to the wheel while it's still running, but use less force than the brown stick, about a minute should do it. Then rinse the grinding chamber to remove the abrasive from the sticks, change your coolant, and off you go with newly dressed wheels.
Depending on the wheels themselves, wheels generally only need replacing every 10K cuts or so.
DragonlensmanWV N.A.O.L.
"There is nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country."
L would only add that most wheels can be retrued by the manufacturer. Check to see about yours. Might be cheaper than replacing.
Thanks for the advice! But I should have mentioned the wheels need to be dressed very frequently, almost daily. That's why I'm wondering if the wheels are at the end of their life span. Once they have been dressed the finish is pretty good but that quickly changes.
One major point I left out - if they are plated wheels, rather than bonded (Only the roughing wheel) you should never dress them, as there are few actual diamond pieces in a plated wheel. Does the roughing wheel look like the V-wheel? Or does the roughing wheel have larger crystals with gaps between them? If it has the larger gaps, it's plated and dressing them will drastically shorten their life. As in dress them, you ruin them immediately. If, however, the flat wheel looks identical the the V wheel (a sort of bronze-ish color with many, very tiny diamond flakes sparkling) then it's a bonded wheel. If it is bonded and the finish goes away very quickly, they can often be re-trued by the manufacturer (as Jacqui noted) for much less than a new one. Running lenses in the meantime can be a problem, so you might have to get a replacement pair for when they're being retrued.
DragonlensmanWV N.A.O.L.
"There is nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country."
I never touch the roughing wheel when I'm dressing the wheels. I do the finishing " V" wheel and the polishing wheel only.
The roughing wheel is extremely noisy which also makes me think it may be time to change them. Yet I'm told they don't need replacing. I should check the lens count and see where its at. If 10000 is a general number I'm pretty sure its well past that.
Again I appreciate all advice
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