Thread: Unsafe metal procedures you have seen online.

Originally Posted by PDW

A good pair of cable cutters on a quiet day would have helped sort that problem.....
PDW

One of the grinders came in that way - cable was only about 1m long but someone put a 3 pin plug on it - to see if it works

Some of the modern and higher end 9 inch grinders are much better and safer than the old ones. I was having this discussion a couple of weeks ago, and one of the blokes was a 20 something ish boilermaker, and his 9" grinder has soft start, as well as kick back protection, and it will shut off straight away if it jambs. He stated that it was pretty safe, easy to use and so much better than the older types he started out on. With the recommended use of 125 mm or smaller angle grinders, the pro models in this size range can be around 2HP (1500W), or possibly more for all I know, far more powerful than the old models which were around 7 —900W. Having said all that, I'm quite happy with my Aldi 5" grinders, which IIRC are 1200 W with variable speed, and at $30 with 3 year warrantee, good buying.

Originally Posted by Ropetangler

Having said all that, I'm quite happy with my Aldi 5" grinders, which IIRC are 1200 W with variable speed, and at $30 with 3 year warrantee, good buying.

$30?????? you got well & truly ripped off. I bought 5 of the things for $14.97 each when they were trying to get rid of them.

I haven't managed to kill one yet and believe me it's not for want of trying. There's a 6" velcro sanding pad mounted on one of those that I use for rapid wood butchery err power sanding.

PDW

Well I bought 3 for $30 each when staying with my brother and SIL on the Sunshine Coast 12 months ago. He was in the middle of a fabrication job at the time and His DeWalt chop saw was struggling with some heavy angle iron (around 4'' X 1/2'' from memory). I said try one of the angle grinders, and we got some 1mm thick cutting disks and tried it out. It worked pretty well, and as we were leaving before he had the job done, I said keep the grinder, and I'll try to get another on my way home. Well we must have called into half the Aldi stores between Wirrana and Melbourne, and no- one had any more angle grinders. I thought that I would have to wait 12 months or so till they came on special again, but about a month after arriving back in Tassie, I went to commission the second of my new grinders, only to find that there was some misalignment, and something was rubbing inside. I contacted the Aldi help line with the details, and they said that they would mail me out a new one, and I could just dispose of the other as I wished.
Well the new one arrived, and had no issues, so I thought it was time that I opened up the problem child to see what I could find. There was nothing really obvious, I even removed the brushes to see if they were damaged and found nothing wrong there, but when I put it back together again the rubbing sound had gone! It has been fine ever since, so now I have cutting disks in one, grinding disks in another and a flap wheel in the third. They work well, but do seem to get hot pretty quickly if you work them for 5 minutes or so, a comment my brother made as well with the one I left with him. If I get the chance, I may get another couple, one as a spare and one with a sanding pad with scotchbrite on it. Most of my jobs are smaller in nature, and I don't usually get the grinder too hot, but cutting some 3mm stainless plate today warmed one up a fair bit. In future for bigger jobs with higher duty cycles, I may just set up extra grinders so that I can swap them out for a break if they start to warm up too much.
You did well getting yours for under $15, though Pete, but even at twice the price, I'm not complaining.

This came up the other day, only assume Mr Martin operates a RH carriage handwheel normally, or riding on the public road at 180mph makes him devil-may-care. Gave me the heebie-jeebies watching this operation when he got his turn on a nice old Takisawa. The 150 micron stuff is a bit of a laugh, but TV I suppose!