Sharpening Tungstens

[DaveK]

I'm getting things set up as I eagerly await tomorrow's UPS delivery of my new PT210EXT, and one small issue was figuring out how to best sharpen the tungsten electrodes. There are lots of tips out there on the internet, and one that looked promising involved a trip to Harbor Freight (or should that be Horror-Fright?).

HF has a circular saw blade sharpener with a dandy little diamond wheel for just $9 (plus you get an emery wheel with that). That seemed just right for sharpening electrodes, but the only problem was that the arbor size was 20mm. I pondered what to do... buy a $10 bushing to make it fit a 5/8 arbor, try and manually center the disk and hope it was balanced, or what. Then the light dawned. I used one of those little step drills and carefully bored the arbor hole out to an exact fit on my angle grinder. It stayed centered and balanced, and I can now just grip the grinder lightly in the vise jaws, chuck the tungsten in a cordless drill, and sharpen away! And if I want the cheap diamond disk to last a bit longer, I can drip a little water on it as I sharpen (messy, but effective). A big plus on the HF diamond disk is that it's two sided, and I can just flip the thing over.

[zoama]

I use a 400 grit 6" flat diamond lapidary disk on a cheap 6" bench grinder. I've been on the same one for 2 years now with no sign of wear. Mine is made of steel and doesn't require a backing plate. I chuck the tungsten in a cordless drill to spin it while I sharpen. You can have a look at them on ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/US-150mm-6-D...item1c3fae3165 320 grit should work also.
The link is for example... I don't know the seller.

[Rambozo]

That HF wheel is a little on the rough side (180 grit), but as you are new to TIG, you will no doubt be doing a lot of tungsten grinding , so that will make quick work of it.