November 13, 20187 yr Made this with my son to do larger work with our new gas forge. Most of what is here was made from scrap I had on hand. The wheels were turned on the lathe, and it has a few changes since the images were taken, but it seems to run true Anyway, helpful suggestions or clever insults requested.
November 13, 20187 yr Man, those wheels must've been pushing the boundaries of that Unimat! Did you mill the slot in the table, or use something else to cut that out? What sort of motor is driving it? Regardless, looks nice!
November 13, 20187 yr Author I made the wheels on my 16x40 lathe. I milled the slot, but have since replaced that table with a larger one. The slot was too close to the belt, and things were getting jammed.
November 13, 20187 yr Looks great, but I'm curious about the little shock absorber. Most of the designs I've seen have that on the "compression" side of the tracking arm. Yours appears to be on the tension side. Can they be purchased to work in both directions? Also, is your motor rated TEFC? If not the metal dust created will do a number on it.
November 13, 20187 yr Author The little gas cylinder is pushing the tracking arm up. I tried several methods, and this one seems to work. The tracking arm rotates on the big bolt in the main chassis. The angle above that on the tracking arm is there to keep the tracking wheel 90 degrees from the drive wheel and the first "working" wheel. It seems to track best that way. Oh, the wheels are stainless steel except for the tracking wheel. About half of the sander is stainless. It is way heavier than it looks. Great catch the motor. I will stick a filter on the back The plan for hollow grinding is to replace the backing plate with a centered working wheel, and back the platen off via an adjustment screw. But I have not made that assembly yet. I am sort of thinking about the best radius to build for what I want to do.
November 13, 20187 yr Thanks for the clarification. It is so close to the pivot it is hard to figure out.
November 14, 20187 yr Author Here are new images. The first one better illustrates the pivot point. The second shows the new table, which has yet to have the slot milled, and the bevel fixture I am working on. Edited November 14, 20187 yr by toadboy65 image problems
February 23, 20197 yr At some point you may want to add an attachment for a 10 or 12 inch "large" wheel, very handy for hollow grinding and some handle work on blades. Also maybe an attachment for a set of small diameter wheels for those really tight radii grinds. These 2 by 72 inch grinders can be amazingly flexible in configurations.
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