Hi Sorveltaja, as I'm concerned with the drill subject too I will take the chance and try to explain 2 little bit about the mysteries of the helical tool called drill, hoping not to jam your interesting and already started article here? Your idea of using the pitch of a special thread as 2 guide for grinding the relieved surface of érill tips sounds interesting, some commercial drill grinder use a similar technique in form of axial control curves embedded in the drill fixture bearing. But I think it is a little Bit too complicated, there are much more simple techniques to achieve a really good performance at home. But first of all, the pitch of the flute (helix) has nothing to do with the relief angles, it only generates the rake angle (if this angle is not corrected or changed by extra grinding the cutting face for non standard boring tasks). This will come obvious if you compare a dril with the front cutting edges of an end mill, end mills are only the special case of the hole system “helix tools", the case with the point angle 180deg ‘The relief or clearance angle is more or less independent of the drills geometry, naturally this angle must nevertheless follow the rules of making chips...a first clearance angle In the range of perhaps @ to 15 deg makes sense for our several metal drilling jobs. In principle there are two major techniques for grinding drills, the four or more facetted relief flanks method and the conically shaped flanks method, normally you will find the conically type on most of all standard drills at your tool store. But the conically drills don’t make a better job, I think it’s easier for industrial manufacturing having only one process on each cutting edge than several passes like you will need on the more facet types. So to my opinion, It's up to your free choice what grinding technique you will prefer at home, If you like it conically a simple swinging fixture will work fine. In fact the cheap fixtures from your tool warehouse use the correct technique, but most of them are nat build precise and tough enoush for holding the drill exact in the axis of rotation. ‘And they have problems with indexing the both culting edges precisely from 0 to 180 deg when changing to the other cutting face....therefore a lot of frustration for there users is preprogrammed....ha ha ha, So you can buy a reliable and expensive fixture from a serious tool grinding machine builder like Cincinnati or Deckel or you have to build your own device. To achieve the needed clearance face by swinging the drill in front of a grinding disk the rotating base of the tool fixture has to be arranged with a defined offset distance to the axis of the drill, the shifting vector of this off set is pointing in the direction away from the cutting edge. The principle of the conically method is easier to present by changing the moving systems, here, contrary to reality, the drill stands still and the grinding disk is performing a conically rotation:‘The drawing shows two of many possibilities for arranging the rotating base in relation to the disk surface (90 and 70 deg), they both works fine and only need some cifferent calculation of the setting parameters, This is a drawing from the last year when I was starting to design my second grinding fixture:‘And here an intermediate result of this in the mean time further enhanced fixture:‘Some details like the graduation of the rotating base and the fine indexing of the tools axis are not really necessary for only drill operations, but I designed this for additionally grinding all forms of d-bit routers. But very important is the precise and rigid mounting of the tool, my choice wes an ER20 system. And we have two linear adjustments, in tool direction for setting the cone radius in relation to the disk surface and perpendicular to this axis the off set value, together both parameters define the relieving characteristics of the desired clearance. ‘A good method for evaluating the clearance angle is having a frontal look at the drills chisel. As evident the chisel line rotates clockwise in direction towards the cutting edge, more rotation means a higher value of clearance. Number 1 and 2 arerelated to the numbers in the first picture above, as you can see, the different setting angels of the rotating system make no great difference to the result of the clearance value. ® > Okay, further details and the description of the other method (four or more facetted) could develop in to 2 really large article and my concentration needed for writing and translating at the same time is going to fade away for this night....ha ha ha, 1 will try to continue as soon as possible in the next days, and I hope the stuff is not too dry presented, don’t wont to bore you with too much theoretic.I spent some time over the weekend thinking about your helical grinding method, but I don’t know if something wise had come out of my brain...na ha ha...okay, let's try it... First of all your pitch problem, you wrote that your last testing version made too little relief angle, as you already mentioned the helix pitch is too low. The calculation of the helix angel is still quite simple, you only need to unwind the surface of the cylinder and so the angel for a given diameter (D) and a give pitch (s) follows the equation tan alpha = s/ (pi *~D)- So one and only helix curve of a multi purpose grinding fixture should become a problem, variations of the drill diameters will require a wide range of pitch value. Here for example the pitch table for a relief angle of 10deg at the circumference of the tool: Drill Diam. Pitch Helix (Relief) Angle} D[mm] s[mm] a[deg] | 10,00 1,00 0,55 s=D*r*tana 2,00 4,11 3,00 1,66 4,00 2,22 5,00 2,77 a 6,00 3,32 D*r 7,00 3,88 8,00 4,43 9,00 4,99 10,00 5,54 And here, for a constant pitch of 2mm the table of the variations of relief angles you would get for the various diameters from 1 to 10mm, you see, the range is really wide:Drill Diam. | Helix Ang. Pitch (konst.) D [mm] a [deg] H [mm] 2,00 1,00 32,48 2,00 17,66 3,00 11,98 4,00 9,04 5,00 7,26 6,00 6,06 7,00 5,20 8,00 4,56 9,00 4,05 10,00 3,64 As evident, alpha is inverse depended to the helix diameter, large diameter means a small helix angle. This in fact also will create an increasing relief angle from the circumference to the center of a dri. Within limits this effect is helpful and even desired, but if the value of variation on one and the same drill is too heavy it might become a problem. So I consulted some articles from the web ang then tried too visualize the theory for Helical Drill Point Grinding by my self a little bit further. What came out is a schematic model for a Universal Helical Grinder System, which, depending on the highly manipulable axis system can create all imaginable relief surfaces on a helical drilling toolUniversal Helical Drill Point Grinding Model \ This model can create all sorts of grindings, quadratic surfaces as well as planar like the multi facet method, so planar is only a special case of the whole process. To simplify the system, some parameters like the distance $ and 8 can be fixed during the operation. But the problem of rotate the tool along the pitch of a helicoid (H) under the implemented angel PHI and with the distance S relative to the tool axis (index of rotation) can not be solved with a collet fixture collinear to a single helix curve like this:Index rotation = 8 Reduced Helical Drill Point Modell If the axis of rotation and indexing (toolholding) coincide you will have no influence on the relief characteristics distribution on the flank surface from center to circumference, But I might be mistaken, that is only a first glimpse on this geometrical problem. For a real calculation it is really not quite a simple task, for it is complex vector analysis of a multi determined 3D system, T don’t do that normally every day....ha ha ha. 1 just tried to simulate the simplified process in AutoCAD an¢ the results were not satisfying, had some problems with boolean operations on complex sweeped bodies. So I should try it with Inventor in the next days.yes and no, the rake angle is actually net concerned in the whole process. Normally it is not necessary to grind this part of the cutting lip, unless you want to adapt the drill for special purpose. And with Sorveltajas fixture and operational base there is no way to realize this, I think he don’t want to do this either. ‘And the pronounced chisel between the two cutting edges is an accessory symptom of the helical grinding method. As you mentioned, eventually picking out material to minimize the chisel will help, but it’s only needed on larger drills. An alternative way to ease the chisel phenomenon a bit is to leave the helical method and generally switch over to the four and six facet grinding, the reduced chisel generates less pressure and the drill is nearly self centering ‘And I think two grinding wheels are really not necessary and would make the things highly complex to adjust an operate too.If Sorveltaja wants to build a universal fixture based on the real helical curve motion he should design a collet based chuck housing with a not collinear, angel adjustable swivel axis and an adjustable off set feature. The helical curve then has to be placed in the axis of the swivel motian, like shown above, and should have a varlable pitch, which is naturally no easy job to design and build. Nowadays the machine designer are used to solve such problems with NC moved axis, with the pure conservative method it will become really complicated, But by the way, the advantages of such complex possibilities for modelling a perfect and highly task optimized relief surface are not necessary for just average home use. This are methods of industriel production for use on high effective machine tools and for people who have to earn money with them. So an alternative could be coming back to a relative simple swivelling fixture, like the design for my Mini Bonelle. It does the job really good and_ build with adequate precision you can grind drills even down to 1mm diameter (with additional Schaublin miniature collets) with very good performance,Since I have added a second, differential dividing system which operates independent from the main indexer I am able to position the cutting lips in precisely repeatable orientations to the main axis system which produce very reliable results.