Rikon 80-808 Bench Grinder Review

[Randall Mack]

I ordered a Rikon 80-808 1hp grinder at the end of November 2022 while there was a 10% off promotion from a local dealer. At the time the grinder was back ordered to February 2023. I actually picked it up when the dealer received sometime near the end of April 2023. During the wait I thought about canceling the order and another sale had discounted it to 15%. It was packaged well with a lot of styrofoam padding. The grinder comes completely assembled. Out of the box there were fine pieces of the wheels present as the wheel arbor holes were damaged. I would have expected the wheels to be left off during shipment to protect them. My purpose for the grinder is for sharpening turning tools with CBN wheels so the wheels it came with are not needed. I removed the wheel guards since they get in the way of the 1-1/2” wide CBN wheels I use. With 2 aluminum bodied CBN wheels installed I tested the grinder. At first it seem to have an issue reaching full speed. The light would be dim and after 15 seconds it would speed up and the light would brighten. You could hear the internal centrifugal switch click within a few seconds of turning it on which I would expect. Thinking maybe CBN wheels are too heavy, not that I really believed that, I removed the CBN wheels and tested a few more times. I tried a 5 minute run and it overheated at about 4 minutes and tripped a breaker. The case reached 140 degrees Fahrenheit using an IR thermometer. I emailed Rikon support. I tried a few more tests the next day while waiting for Rikon to respond. The grinder operation was not consistent. Sometimes it jumped to full speed and ran cool and after a couple days it seemed to do that consistently. I communicated this to Rikon and they suggested I just go ahead and use it. The grinder got no use for the rest of the year since we had been planning to move. I got the grinder back out this past month and discovered it was still having issues. I never figured it would be magically fixed but without being able to convince Rikon I was stuck. I got smart and clamped an amp meter on the hot line feeding the circuit in which I plugged in the grinder. It measured about 25 amps. A 20 amp circuit breaker won’t trip immediately at this amount but seems like a fire hazard to me. I contacted Rikon via email and requested a replacement. They suggested the start capacitor was bad and sent a replacement. I installed it but it made no difference. They then asked me to remove the LED bulb and retest. Hmm, 12v LED bulb drawing about 2000 watts, I don’t think so. It made no difference. Then shortly after that last test I turned on the grinder again and noticed fine wisps of smoke coming out both ends of the grinder. It’s cooked. I communicated this to Rikon and they responded that if I ship the 40 lb motor portion to them they will ship me a replacement. That would cost around $70 dollars to ship and I risk getting another bad one and start the email chain all over.


So in the end I bought a boat anchor.

Also if you own a Rikon grinder be careful touching the nameplate. The serial number is printed with ordinary ink and fades with heat and can get wiped off easily with your fingers. Of course this assumes it is useful for anything.