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mklotz70 belt sander build


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Got the 8" wheel narrowed down to the width of the sanding belt. Got started on the axle. In the last pic....you can see how the right side is not as smooth as the left....that's also from chatter from the steel flexing. I don't need a nice surface finish on it anyway :) The taper is an optical illusion.

 

 

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Finished up the axle and tig welded it into place.....the welds were horrible...didn't even think to take pics. I made the hole for the top pulley fairly close to the edge so that the frame would be more out of the way when grinding. Doesn't look as nice as it would centered, but it should be more functional. I started to mount up the belt....hhmm....I set all the dimensions with the small 3" drive pulley....I'm going to have to shorten the main tube to get the belt to fit. Worse case, I'll have to shorten the distance between the 8" pulley and the one above it....that is taking up a ton of belt length.

 

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When I unclamped the main tube, I noticed that it has a warp in it from the welding. So, I straightened it out. I've used the press more on this project than I have in the last year or so.

 

 

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A press is one of the best tools you can have for a home shop. It can be used for so many different projects. A very handy too and also very inexpensive, The 20 ton is on sale with arbor plates for like $150 at HF. The Arbor plates they include are not so good, they were some cast crap. Mine broke while pressing bearings on a differential carrier, It snapped. Not a good thing to have happen in a press. Any how got some 1" Plate and made my own arbors.

The Belt sander is very nice, I have shop envy.

Keep up the good work.

Bryce

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It's a great tool to have sitting there, waiting. It rarely gets used, but when you need it, it's about the only thing that will do the job. At $150, it's a fairly spendy for most guys to just have sitting around 95% of the time. Mine's gotten used more on this project in the last month than it's been used in the last year or so. I enjoy using it a lot more now that I have the knob on the valve screw! I haven't had a prob with the plates, but I also had an extra set of plates. Someone was throwing them away...didn't have a clue what they were for....I did, so I just put them aside until I got the press. Everytime I think I'm going to move the press into a shed, I start using it again. Would sure like to have that real estate in the shop!! :) I also have a 1" plate I keep on there for most pressing. It was in the way for this job, but it's in pretty much all of the other pics. :)

 

Glad you like the grinder....hopefully it will work well enough to justify this time!! :)

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A100addict and his bro came over...so we mocked it back up to try it with a belt. Didn't want to track worth beans :( We found that the the 8" wheel was not square. I put a bandsaw cut in the backside and we bent the tubing while rotating the belt. Got it to track decent. It wasn't until after I looked at these pictures that I realized just how cattywampus it is now :(

 

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But, that got the belt tracking pretty good. We then found that the drive pulley was still not centered.

 

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We squared up the drive pulley, and got the tracking to look really good. The bungy holds enough tension that I can grab the drive pulley and give it a good, quick tug and it does not slip. I was worried that it might because of having to pull the mass of the 8" wheel. A straight edge showed just how out of whack everything still is. I need to get the nuts/bolts for the adjustable pieces done now so I can work from a rigid frame before I worry about the final alignment.

 

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Looks good Mike. The alignment issues your showing are a big part of why I get apprehensive about investing a lot of money in materials for a project like this. I don't have a lot of experience with the fabricating and I don't want an expensive scrap pile :D

 

Nice work!!

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We've already been talking about a different design....it would eliminate most of the alignment grief. I should have just tack welded the axle until after checking tracking. The metal itself is not the expensive part...it's the pulleys and motor that add all the cost. So..if I ruin a frame piece right now....it's less than $20 to fix :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I just found out that the forum switch shut off all my notifications....so there's a lot of threads I follow that got updated and I didn't get notified....this was one.

 

 

The project has been at a stand still for a couple of weeks. Today's my friday on a 3 day weekend, so maybe I'll get some time on it soon. I pushed it aside to do brake kits and I need to finish those too! I was hoping to get my wgn on the road for the bbq on sunday, but watching tv for a week instead of working in the shop means I won't be bringing the wgn :( Oh well. I'll get busy soon :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Spent some time on the belt grinder today. In order to get the upper idler pulley to track correctly, I had to be able to tighten the axle bolt up. I had to bore the pulley out a bit more and make a spacer for it so that the nut didn't squeeze the inner races together and bind the bearings. I was able to get it clamped together enough to fire it up. There seems to be a feedback oscillation in the motor circuit. Maybe I need the flywheel on there. I figured that with the mass of the pulleys I had on there, they would act like flywheels. When I slow the belt down a bit too much, it stays slow and cylcles. If I turn the pot down to about half, it regains control and I can speed it back up to full speed again. I think I'm going to see about getting a 1.5 or 2hp motor for it just to save myself the time of trying to get this figured out. I really need to simply get this done and in use. Anyway....here's some pics and a couple of vids :)

 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

I just read this whole thing....looks very good,but, I have a question. Are we Mainers the only nut jobs who RACE belt sanders?? (thats what I was expecting to see here..) It looks like a great job,just not what I was expecting at all...haha

//www.bing.com/images/search?q=belt+sander+racing#focal=5281b4c7b78a05636aefcf186b6e01f9&furl=http://www.conventioninsider.com/wp-content/windowslivewriterwoodworkingtradeshowofftotheraces-11225bsra-right-logo-2.gif

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  • 1 year later...

OMG!!! Believe it or not, I'm going to do an update to this thread!! :) My plan is to put a page up on my site, but I figured it only fair that I finish this thread as well. I've got a lot of info out there, mostly in unfinished threads. :( I'm not done with this yet, but I have been working on it.

 

First up....pulled the tub back out of the shed....bit of extra rust, but not bad. I had picked up a 120V/1ph/1.5hp/3450rpm motor for this project over the summer off of CL. $50? $100? I don't remember right now. I wanted the extra speed, but as it turns out, there's a sacrifice made for start up torque. I had a fixed pulley left over from the treadmill motor setup, but I decided to spend the money and put some stepped pulleys on to have some options. Good thing I did. I needed the different options to find the sweet spot between start up torque and speed.

 

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I mocked it back up on a stand I had made for a vise that hasn't been used in years. I may extend the riser to get the height of the grinder up a bit, but it's close enough for now. Once I got it mocked up enough to track the belt, I laid down some tack welds to hold things.

 

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I even tacked it to the stand, then realized that I was a bit premature! I cut the tacks so I could turn it over to mount the pillow block mounts.

 

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