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Making A Knurling Tool

terry_g

terry_g

Ultra Member
Last night I spent the evening making parts for a knurling tool. I picked up a pair of straight knurling wheels and need a tool for them.
I am going to try my success at cut knurling using one wheel in the boring bar holder. If it works satisfactorily I will make a tool holder for the pair.
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Love the vertical shear tool.
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A novel way of using 123 blocks.
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I managed to damage a 3/4" end mill there must have been a hard spot in the mystery metal I was cutting.
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A quick touch up with the hillbilly tool grinder and as good as new.
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Looking forward to seeing how it works for you. I need to make a knurling tool for home. I only have a cheap bump knurling tool now, and am on the fence about making a cut knurler, or a scissor tool.
 
Dan Dubeau said:
Looking forward to seeing how it works for you. I need to make a knurling tool for home. I only have a cheap bump knurling tool now, and am on the fence about making a cut knurler, or a scissor tool.
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I not on the fence. I want a cut knurler. Just the price scares me - even home made the wheels are expensive.
 
My wallet hangs me up on that fence all the time too.....

I'm very curious about the difference between cut knurls, and form knurls, the wheels themselves. I know from handling forming knurls they don't have sharp corners, whereas cut knurls have sharp corners. I've never used, or even seen a cut knurl tool or wheel. I've bought a few straight form knurl wheels, and was just planning on surface grinding them sharp to give them a try that way. I haven't thought about this in a long time (bought them a few years ago, and shelved the project....I have a lot of those.....) so details are fuzzy right now. Those who have experience in cut knurling, is that a possibility? Or are cut knurl wheels somehow different? Different material, geometry?
 
Dan Dubeau said:
My wallet hangs me up on that fence all the time too.....

I'm very curious about the difference between cut knurls, and form knurls, the wheels themselves. I know from handling forming knurls they don't have sharp corners, whereas cut knurls have sharp corners. I've never used, or even seen a cut knurl tool or wheel. I've bought a few straight form knurl wheels, and was just planning on surface grinding them sharp to give them a try that way. I haven't thought about this in a long time (bought them a few years ago, and shelved the project....I have a lot of those.....) so details are fuzzy right now. Those who have experience in cut knurling, is that a possibility? Or are cut knurl wheels somehow different? Different material, geometry?
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The one I made, I used straight knurls from KBC then ground them on SG to make sure they had sharp edges
 
Mcgyver said:
The one I made, I used straight knurls from KBC then ground them on SG to make sure they had sharp edges
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Thanks. I "figured" that would work, but without experience, I was just shooting from the hip. I most likely read that you did that on one of the forums back when I bought mine and had just forgot about it.
 
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Mcgyver said:
The one I made, I used straight knurls from KBC then ground them on SG to make sure they had sharp edges
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I missed this somehow. I looked at your past posts as well as what @gerritv posted and concluded I needed to buy the wheels which are not cheap.

If I can just buy regular wheels and grind them sharp on my surface grinder, this project just jumped up 4 or 5ft higher in my priority list.

Thanks for posting that.
 
I gave one of the knurling wheels a few test runs on some mystery metal. I had varying results.
It was definitely cutting. I found I got the best results with a high feed rate .012" per revolution
and taking light cuts. I cut the second helix with the lathe in reverse.
I think trying to set up two knurling wheels would be a lot of work for a one off job. Knurling
both helix's separately is probably faster.
The wheels are 1mm pitch which is quite fine I have a pair of 1.8mm wheels coming.

The knurl looks better in the flesh than it does in the picture.
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This the link to the knurling wheels. I'm not sure where they came from but its two plus weeks delivery time.

Another thing I noticed was that the angled knurling wheels seem very forgiving as far as diameter of the shaft being knurled.
I took a length of 1" bar chucked it and turned the scale off and knurled it. Took another cut and knurled again, I did that 6 times and never measured and calculated and the pitch worked out each time. That could be luck but I doubt it.
 
terry_g said:
Another thing I noticed was that the angled knurling wheels seem very forgiving as far as diameter of the shaft being knurled.
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That has always fascinatef me. It just doesn't seem right that it can always find its way like that. I would have expected a band of mismatched wedges where the teeth fought to regain synchronicity. But somehow or another they just seem to find the right smoosh to even that all out around the entire diameter. Go figure!
 
I'm convinced that cut knurling is the way to go. a bit rich for my taste for now, but perhaps one day!

I think bump knurling is fine for Aluminum and brass if your lathe is big enough. Too much pressure for a small lathe, though.

I'm not too enthused about scissor knurling - many of the cheap ones, and even the Hemingway kit seems a little... fragile... for my taste. it's a lot of work to see if I like it.
 
terry_g said:
A quick touch up with the hillbilly tool grinder and as good as new.
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Thanks guys - the knurling discussion was interesting even though i don’t have a lathe.
But I’d really like to know: what is a “hillbilly tool grinder”? I assume it’s a home made disc grinder accessory - but to assume is dangerous.
 
Dabbler said:
I'm convinced that cut knurling is the way to go. a bit rich for my taste for now, but perhaps one day!
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That pretty much sums up my view too. But if a regular pressure wheel can be sharpened enough to cut, it's a whole new way of getting there. This needs to be thoroughly investigated.
 
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