NO  ! You  will quickly destroy the wheel at that speed. Diamond is fine for carbide but a white wheel for tool steel. In both cases run at their correct cutting speed. Noel.

Stefan Gotteswinter made a slow speed lap for carbide tooling Here  which uses a diamond disc and metal-backed ceramic disc, with or without diamond paste applied.  He uses his for putting a final polished edge on his solid carbide cutting tools.  His wheel turns at 230 to 240 rpm.

A YouTube search for “(s)low speed grinder” will throw up alternatives, too, though I haven’t watched any of them.

John

The wheels you linked are intended for regular pro shop fast grinders with a table along each end (eg Delta Diamond). The diamond impregnated rubber must be handled gently not like a carbide wheel. Lapping / honing machines are a different beast and run slower to avoid flinging the paste all over the operator.

Is there any particular reason to run a diamond grinder so slow?

Edit: This seems to work ok and it seems to be running quite fast?

https://youtu.be/h4xzwI2LVio

That wheel will run at higher speeds than you will be using, but there is a limitation for using diamond wheels which may not have been mentioned. Diamond is a form of carbon and iron has an affinity for carbon, it dissolves easily into iron. So if you sharpen a lot of HSS the wheel will suffer. Diamond is best used for carbide and for all types of iron a cubic boron nitride wheel would be more suitable. That said, I have two electroplated type diamond wheels at the museum which get used touching up HSS occasionally and they still work. These metal centre wheels are much safer to use than ordinary wheels which can explode, especially when stupid people who cannot read the warning notices grind aluminium.

Hi, running any grinding wheel slower than the design speed range, will wear the wheel away faster, and the slower you go, will cause the wear to be faster. Running them faster than the designed speed range, risks the wheel to fracture. Grinding or cutting aluminium with an abrasive disc, should only be done with a disc that is designed for aluminium.

Regards Nick.

The aluminium gets ground into the wheel surface as lumps and it can explode a wheel by its high thermal expansion.

On 5 January 2026 at 16:54 old mart Said:

The aluminium gets ground into the wheel surface as lumps and it can explode a wheel by its high thermal expansion.

Yes but not if you do it properly. Stuffing aluminium into a normal bench grinder wheel is a recipe for a blinding headache.

One of my fellow apprentices at work used to do it deliberately on the belt grinder when I was a teenager. He used to light it off using a glowing cigarette end and blowing on the dust pile, then flick it off to make an impressive fireball.