When we are runing a company dedicated to the produce of furniture, there are more tools, other than circular saw blades, that must be sharpened: finger joint cutters, planner cutter heads, spiral routers... Let's see which are the different sharpening options we have.

Depending on the number of tools to be sharpened, we must adopt one or another sharpening strategy. In this post, we analyze tool by tool, avoiding talking about circular saw or band saw blades as we already have other posts dedicated to them. If you are interested in circular saw or band saw, you can see them here:

• Sharpening circular saws for wood
• Sharpening and maintenance of band saws for wood

Sharpening of wood tools

1. Finger joint cutters
2. Planner cutter heads
3. Routers
4. Spiral routers
5. Drills
6. Resume

1.Finger joint Cutters

Finger joint cutters can come in only one piece, or several pieces mounted together. In the case of several pieces mounted together, this sometimes has to be re-aligned in orfer to form only one profile.

The sharpening of these tools is really easy: These are sharpened like a straight cutter.

In order to do the sharpening operation, we will requiere the following machines depending on the quantity of tools per day to be grinded:

ELITE model mini

Recommended for low grinding volume, such as 4-6 tools per day.

• Accessories needed: Dividing head, mouting arbor to adapt the finger joint cutters to the dividing head, and the grinding wheel.
• Accesories recommended: tailstock

ELITE model 92

For a heavier work or tools with more weight.

• Accessories needed: Dividing head, mouting arbor to adapt the finger joint cutters to the dividing head, and the grinding wheel.
• Optional accesories: Cooling equipment to do wet grinding, which increases tool grinding quality and grinding wheel lifetime. It is mandatory in the case of grinding TCT tools, as carbide in cacerigenous by inhalation.
• Tailstock

ELITE model 92 CNC

When we have a big production, probably we have also lots of tools to be grinded, then the CNC machine is the most appropiate, as it will do all the grinding operation automatically.

It also incorporates the cooling system which gives the best grinding quality and grinding wheel lifetime.

This CNC machine has a program system which a guided program control panel. User only has to input the grinding values such as travel lengh, number of teeth and amount to be grinded, as the grinding program is already introduced in the machine CNC.

2.Planner cutter heads

Cutter heads can be grinded in two completely different machines: a knives grindind machine or an universal cutter grinder.
We will explain when to use one or another.

Knives grinding machine: ELITE CU mini 650

Accesories needed: magnetic chuck for HSS / magnetic chuck for carbide, grinding wheel.

All the knives that can be unmounted from the cutter block (replaceable knives) are suitable to be grinded in a knives grinding machine. However some users prefer to do not remove this knives and grind all the cutter block without unmounting them.

However on profiled cutter blocks, it is desirable to unmount it and do the grinding process in a knives grinding machine. This is because it is a simpler and cheaper process than performing the grinding operation on a profile grinding machine.

Universal cutter grinder: ELITE 92

Accesories needed: dividing head, mounting arbor, tailstock, grinding wheel.
Accesories recommended: coolant system.

Straight cutter heads can be also grinded in an universal cutter grinder such as the ELITE 92. It is not recommended to use the ELITE mini because of the heavy weight of the tools.
However helical cutter heads or carbide soldered cutter heads it is mandatory to grind it in an universal cutter grinder, as this can be unmounted from the cutter block to be grinded with a knives grinding machine.

CNC cutter grinder: ELITE 92 CNC

Accesories needed: dividing head, mounting arbor, grinding wheel.

Same as the manual ELITE 92, this tools can be made on the CNC machine ELITE 92 CNC. Because of its stroger head divider, the tailstock could not be needed.
Main advantage is that all the grinding process is fully automatic, liberating the operator of the tedious task of manual grinding this heavy tool, which can be using the time to do other tasks.
As cutter heads are so easy to set up for grinding, the set up time is exactly the same as in the manual ELITE 92 machine. So no complex or long programming tasks are needed.

3.Routers

Routers are easy to grind. We can do it manually or by CNC.

ELITE mini

• Accesories needed: dividing head, 3 jaws chuck or spring collet, grinding wheel.

Straigh routers are so easy to grind. Process is identicall to finger joints.

ELITE 92

Accesories needed: dividing head, 3 jaws chuck or spring collet, grinding wheel.

Same as in the ELITE mini.

ELITE 92 CNC

• Accesories needed: dividing head, 3 jaws chuck or spring collet, grinding wheel.

Exactly the same as the above two machines, but in an automatic process. Very simple process also.

4.Spiral routers

Here the things gets a little more complicated. When using a manual machine, some expertise from the operator is required, because we use a tool indexing finger to copy the helix.
With the CNC machine is easier becasue we only need to give the helical angle and the grinding travel lenght.

ELITE mini

Accesories needed: dividing head, 3 jaws chuck or spring collet, indexing finger, grinding wheel.

ELITE 92

Accesories needed: dividing head, 3 jaws chuck or spring collet, indexing finger, grinding wheel.

ELITE 92 CNC

Accesories needed: dividing head, 3 jaws chuck or spring collet, indexing finger, grinding wheel.

It is the recommended way to go. This way we can get perfect grinding results with the same preparation time for grinding as a straitgh router bit: Just needed to introduce the parameters of grinding lenght, tool helix and the total amount to be grinded.
As this tools are normally made of carbide, the cooling system included as a standard feature on the Elite 92 CNC, is a must have.

5.Drills

And last but not least: drills. We name "drill" to a lot of different tools in fact.

The most "wood typical" drills are the 3 point drills. This are in fact the most easy to be grinded, and we only need the appropiate grinding wheel (The tool nr. 1 in the photo, starting from the left).
Next is the flat drill, the middle one in the photo. This is also very easy to sharpen, but it requieres two steps: one from the vertical part, and the other step for the horizontal side
And the last drill is the one used in metal, but that can be also used sometimes in hard wood or composites. For this drill we recommend a specific grinding machine, such as the Elite B70 or Elite B20.

6.Resume: The general "rule of thumb"

The recommendation is the following:

• If you have a few variated tools without profiled cutter, then you can use an ELITE mini or ELITE 92.
• If you have more quantity of tools, without profiles, the ELITE 92 is the best solution.
• For a company with medium to high volume, the ELITE 92 CNC is a must, as it liberates the operator of the tedious grinding task, which is very time consuming. So the operator is free to do other tasks.
• But if we have profiled cutters, the the best solution is a ELITE CU mini 650 + magnetic chuck, and a ELITE 92 CNC: This way with only one operator we can clean the tools, mount it on the machines, and while the machines are grinding (both ELITE CU mini 650 and ELITE 92 CNC are fully automatic) the operator can prepare other tools or finish the adjustmen of the already grinded tools.