Hi,guys
Thanks for all the comments, but I am a bit puzzled by the contradictions in the advice.
I have never used my CBN wheels with anything other than HSS tools, so that shouldn’t cause any problems with them. I always believed that these wheels needed little, if any, maintenance, but I have noticed a change in the appearance of them over the last couple of months. I heard about Axminsters CBN cleaner and bought one. I didn’t use it when it came,as its appearance looked a bit dubious., hence my question on the forum.
The general opinion on here is that cleaning is not necessary. However, ChaiLatte’s contribution suggested looking at a video produced by Eagles Super Abrasives. I’ve watched that and it appears to recommend dressing diamond wheels. It’s quite short. The kit used initially is not something I’ve ever seen before, being some sort of rotating wheel. Having used that, the operative restarts the wheel, gets it up to top speed, switches it off, and then applies something like the Axminster block to the wheel and holds it there until the wheel is brought to a stop. There is no explanation as to what the block is made of. There are before and after pictures of the wheel purporting to show a renewal or exposure of the cutting edges of the diamonds embedded in the wheel surface. Given that diamond is 1 on the Mohs Scale, it can’t be that the stick sharpens the diamond bits, so it must be that in some way it cleans out stuff from between them. But who knows?
I‘ve also looked at YouTube in the search for an answer to my question. There are a number of sites that recommend dressing these wheels, but often they involve putting stuff on them that I wouldn’t want to do, a bit like Mindthatwhatouch’s suggestion of using brake cleaner fluid.
So, all in all, I’m not much further on with this problem. I bought the wheels from Vicmarc, so I will try to get their opinion about it.
I’ll report back if I get anything like a definitive answer.
D.
