磨toolswithout环氧firstlight——言.docVIP

Grinding Tools without Epoxy Richard Schwartz Star Fleet Engineering Hawthorne California rev. September, 2000 rev. September 2001 This article is to explain how to make tile grinding tools and dental stone pitch lap foundations without epoxy and to also explain WHY this is a good way to do it. A common problem that beginners experience when making telescope mirrors is the failure of the edge zone to polish out. This is usually caused by inadequate fine grinding with a solid glass tool. To make matters worse, the beginner is likely to build his pitch lap on the grinding tool so that correcting the grinding problem requires destruction of the pitch lap. Tile tools are superior to plain glass tools because their channels distribute the grits in such a way as to give better fine grinding at the edge of the mirror. (If your glass tool is thick enough, you can channel it and get the same benefits.) Tile tools are easy to make. One supplier of mirror blanks provides two glass blanks with the intent that one of them will be a tool, but with a tile tool and a separate pitch lap foundation of dental stone, you can make it into a second mirror with greatly reduced chance of grief. Many mirror makers have problems with their tile grinding tools. These problems include inability to clean the channels due to the use of hex tiles plaster and other materials flaking off of the tool and possibly scratching the glass varnish peeling off of the tool or lap foundation after water penetration epoxy failing and tiles falling off edge tiles grinding too thin and breaking plaster does not bond well to the tiles The tools described here will conquer all of these problems with the right choice of materials and a good fabrication method. Success in tool making begins with the choice of materials. I prefer the 1 inch square white unglazed mozaic tiles that are available at Home Depot stores here in California (and also in Alberta). The tiles are sold in mats t