Have you ever wondered about whether you can grind aluminum on a bench grinder? If this is something that you have been considering, then our team is on hand to help answer this question. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at why you might want to grind aluminum, and how an aluminum grinding wheel can help ensure that the job is completed safely and effectively.
Can You Grind Aluminum on a Bench Grinder?
To begin with, we need to consider whether you can grind aluminum on a bench grinder.
Fortunately, we’re glad to announce that aluminum can be safely and easily ground using a bench grinder. Indeed, bench grinders offer an excellent opportunity for grinding aluminum materials – however, you may need to invest in a specialist type of wheel to be successful.
There are a couple of potential complications that can arise as a result of grinding aluminum, and generally speaking, bench grinder wheels are not usually intended to grind a soft metal. To this end, before you try to grind aluminum using a bench grinder, you should ensure that you are using a silicone carbide wheel for the best results.
As standard, most wheels used for grinding will be made with either a medium or coarse grit – but neither of these are suitable for grinding aluminum materials. Hence, while you absolutely can grind aluminum on a bench grinder, it’s crucial you switch this wheel out for a gentler one that won’t put you at risk and will give you a high-quality finish from your grinding efforts.
The Safety of Grinding Aluminum with a Bench Grinder
At this point, it’s imperative that we consider the health and safety aspects of using a bench grinder to grind aluminum. After all, grinding aluminum could potentially be a dangerous activity, and you should always be cautious of how this relates to your own activities.
Of course, regardless of the material you are grinding, you should always wear gloves with your bench grinder to stay safe from the potential dangers these can pose. Gloves help protect your hands from burns, abrasions, and the like; as such, they’re a crucial piece of bench grinder kit.
Can Aluminum Cause Sparks?
Firstly, we should consider whether grinding aluminum has the risk of sparks. Fortunately, because aluminum is a soft metal, it doesn’t cause sparks during grinding, and is actually more prone to melting or breaking away from the main material in small portions.
Contrastingly, hard metals are much more prone to sparking during the grinding process, which makes grinding hard metals such as titanium incredibly dangerous. What’s more, titanium is also exceptionally flammable, representing a further grinding risk.
Nevertheless, since aluminum is a soft metal, it has neither of these properties. As such, there’s no risk of sparks while grinding aluminum, although you may want to wear gloves to ensure you don’t get burned by melted metal.
The Potential Dangers of Grinding Aluminum
Since aluminum is a soft metal, the standard danger of using a bench grinder – the risk of sparks – is eliminated. However, this doesn’t mean that grinding aluminum is completely safe, and as such, you should carefully consider the danger of chemical reactions with iron and steel.
If you’re wondering about whether you can grind aluminum on a bench grinder safely, then it’s also worth considering the potential safety issues for those coming after you. When aluminium comes into contact with particles of iron or steel, the results can be incredibly dangerous. A mixture of iron/steel and aluminum can drastically increase the risk of fires breaking out. Plus, leftover aluminum on the grinding wheel, if not adequately cleaned, can create the potential for the grinding wheel to explode.
To this end, you should carefully ensure that you clean all grinding equipment carefully before and after use. This will help to protect you against the potential for danger, as well as ensuring that those using the equipment after you will also stay safe without needing to worry about the danger of explosions.
How to Clean Aluminum Grinding Wheels
As we’ve already explained, aluminum grinding wheels need to be kept clean if they are to be effective. However, if you have been wondering how to keep your grinding wheels clean, don’t worry – there’s an easy solution to this challenge!
You don’t need to throw a grinding wheel away after each use; instead, using a grinding wheel dresser will help you to bring your soft grinding wheel back into good condition, knocking aluminum shards and fragments free so as to leave the wheel clean and ready to use. As an alternative, you could use steel wire brushes to remove any leftover aluminum fragments, but this is often a much more tedious process and is less effective at cleaning your grinding wheel.
Therefore, we would always recommend that you instead invest specifically in a grinding wheel dresser for the best possible result. This will save you both time and – in the long run – money compared to buying new aluminum grinding wheels each time you need them!
Always ensure you have cleaned the wheel thoroughly using a dresser to prevent the risk of fires and explosions as a result of the wheel heating up too quickly! This simple step could quite literally be life saving.
How to Use a Grinding Wheel with Aluminum
At this point, we need to consider how to use a grinding wheel to grind aluminum. As we’ve already mentioned, before you can look at how to grind aluminum on a bench grinder, it’s vital you first choose a suitable aluminum grinding wheel. Standard medium or coarse grit wheels will not be suitable for aluminum, so always invest in a suitable choice of aluminum bench grinding wheel before getting started.
Once you’ve picked out a suitable bench grinding wheel that’s gentle enough to polish aluminum safely, you’ll want to carefully replace the existing grinding wheel with your chosen aluminum grinding wheel, taking care to keep the wheels free from any contamination.
Next, unplug your bench grinder, and with a screwdriver and wrench, loosen the screws on the safety guard and the nuts on the wheel. This will allow you to position your new aluminum grinder and firmly secure it in place.
That’s all there is to it. Now, all that’s left to do is to replace the safety guard and power up the bench grinder once more; then, you can get started with polishing your aluminum materials as you would with any other metal.
However, always be cautious to ensure that you don’t do more harm than good with your aluminum material. It can be tempting to rush grinding aluminum since it’s “so easy,” but this actually isn’t the case at all. In fact, grinding aluminum, even with a specialist wheel, should always be done carefully to prevent the metal from melting excessively and to keep the material in the highest condition it can be.
Is It Worth Using a Bench Grinder for Aluminum Materials?
Bench grinders with suitable aluminum grinding wheels can be incredibly effective for polishing aluminum materials, however, a question still needs to be asked here. Is it worth it?
Just because you can grind aluminum on a bench grinder doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. To grind aluminum, you’ll need to invest in a specialist aluminum grinding wheel – silicon carbide is usually a good option for this.
However, if you’re only looking to polish one or two small pieces of aluminum, the cost and time involved with buying and replacing the grinding wheel may not be worth it. In these cases, you may want to consider outsourcing your aluminum grinding needs or otherwise invest in a smaller, handheld rotary tool.
After all, to polish aluminum, very delicate sandpaper is enough to have excellent results – so, the coarse grinding wheels evidently are a little overkill simply to polish your aluminum.
However, if you have a slightly larger number of aluminum materials to polish, or if you’ve found a great deal on competitively priced aluminum grinding wheels, then you may want to consider this as a viable option.
Fortunately, as we’ve already explained, grinding aluminum is incredibly simple with a bench grinder, so this can make your life a lot easier. Just make sure that you clean up effectively and thoroughly once you’re done to avoid the risk of danger.
Conclusion
If you’ve been looking to create an aluminum bench grinder, then today’s article will have hopefully given you some further insight into this topic. Compared to some materials such as titanium, aluminum is a soft metal, and this means you won’t need to worry about the normal dangers of grinding metals; however, thorough cleaning with a dresser is necessary to prevent damage and potential explosions.
So, the answer to the question of, “can you grind aluminum on a bench grinder?” is absolutely yes – so long as you have the right type of aluminum grinding wheel in place.
