Non-Name Brand Grinding Discs, etc.

[Daryl]

Having recently purchased a sale bulk pack of grinding discs, and the results from that, I feel it important to advise everyone about the quality control of items that are not common name brands.
Normally, the discs I purchase for my 8" Makita angle grinder were either Norton or Walter brand. These discs remove material very well, produce comparitively minimal dust, and last quite long. I happened across a bulk pack of ten grinding discs for a price that I felt may give me some cost savings (I, like everyone else, has to be vigilant for econoomy).
The first disc I installed on the grinder was severely out of balance, even though visually it displayed no runout when turned on the grinder; the same for the next four in the pack. The fifth one only lasted about thirty seconds of light grinding before it suffered a catastrophic failure. When I first felt the disc starting to go, I had just pulled my finger from the trigger and was turning it away from my body when it let go. I now have several bruises on my legs and stomach, as well as a few dents and dings in the wall and cieling of my shop. Feeling that I may have been to blame, I examined the remaining discs in the pack - the media or particulate matter displayed cracks or hazing right on the surface. I have now destroyed the remaining discs with a hammer, to prevent the being salvaged by someone else.
All this because I thought I saved 10%.
.
For those of you purchasing bargain 'stuff': caveat emptor.

[welder19]

Unfortunately you can rarely save on grinding and cutting supplies by going with a lower cost no name brand, however there are sometimes that it does pay off but unfortunately it is a matter of trial and error to find the few that cost less but do work as well as the high quality, high cost brands.
Norton, Morse and 3M are the brands that I use to cover just about all of my cutting and grinding needs, they cost a little more than most but last a lolt longer and work much better so there fore they actually cost less in the long run, plus a lot of tooling is time consumeing to change so there fore you loose a lot of valuable time also.

welder19

[highlander]

Darryl,
Thank you for posting this. Safety is number one, and advice from personal experience is a great thing to give. All my grinding discs are norton or dewalt. I had one harbor freight one break apart on me(i got out unscathed, as it broke apart as i turned the grinder on so it was fairly low rpm) and won't buy anything but quality now.

[mike-hr]

Life's too short to spend time with inferior abrasives. Buy the best, get the job done fast, then go fishing.

[Ten Hammers]

Don't forget Pearl abrasives. This wheel may or may not have been designed for stainless. It works GREAT on carbon. I have been hounded for the pic saying that I used the wheel too long and had no guard. Your mileage may vary. This wheel is on a Bosch 4 1/2" and I have a Milwaukee with flap wheel. I have a 7" makita with makita wheel, die grinder with cutoff and a belt grinder. The Pearl wheel will not only grind smooth but cutoff and cut welds handily. As it gets smaller it may have uses in tight applications. I do NOT use wheels with fiberglass re-enforcement. To each his own. Swap meet cheap abrasives are just that. Mystery meat. Norton, Makita, Pearl are good choices. SOME rock wheels are now made in CHINA and the quality has went. They are junk ( and yes some are name brands ). Sharp good files and hot files still are included in my inventory as are emery boards, nail files and the striker from a book match.

[ironrosefarms]

I also don't like purchasing discs from the Lowes, home depot or menards... I have found far to often that these discs get dropped or beat around causing weak spots in other wise good brands. I will buy from our local hardware store as the guy is very careful with his stock, other wise I go to a welding supply house or similar place to avoid the mass handling and flunky careless stock boys that they tend to get...

[Dave M]

I purchased a sleave of grinding discs from one of those cummings tool sale trucks, They were for my 4.5"grinder. Same story as the others I got what I paid for. They did not spin balanced and they made a ton of dust for very little stock removal. It takes 5 of them to do the work of 1 good norton disc. Well I wont do that again.

[LarryM]

I get my 10% discount because I buy a whole box at a time. Or as many as it takes to get a break in price. I agree a cheap exploding grinding wheel not worth bring in the shop. BTW I had to learn the hard way too.

Larry

[Woody]

Always remember that the cheapest thing you can buy is often the most expensive thing you can own. If cheapest were best, we would all be driving YUGOs. I have used some cheap grinding disks and while they didn't come apart, they didn't last very long so there was actually no savings. Remember to always check the maximum recommended rpm of the disk against the max rpm of the grinder.

[UnicornForge]

I have also noticed that the cheaper discs don't have the industry standard codes printed on them to tell you the properties of the disc. I look for an "N" in the code to tell me that the disc is designed for fast material removal.... if I remember correctly.