Right so I’m now onto design number three and the wheels have come off a bit. Thinking I had the design pretty much sorted I rushed out and spent a load of money on parts. What I should really have done though is had a good think about how I was going to fit the motor to the device as the one that I have gone and bought (a 750W TEFC induction motor) is huge!
The motor being huge is quite a problem because I came to the conclusion that this project was only worth doing if I ended up with something better than you could buy. My definition of better (helps when you define these things yourself) was a machine that was capable of all of the following functions:
- Belt Sanding
- Bobbin Sanding
- Edge Sanding
- Disc Sanding
As far as I am aware there isn’t a commercial machine that is capable of all of these functions. The Axminster machine can do rudimentary bobbin sanding but not edge sanding. To do both belt and edge sanding I came with with the cunning plan of tipping the machine on it’s side. If I also made it simple to change the driven belt wheel it should also be possible to use that shaft as a bobbin sander. To facilitate using this wheel as a bobbin sander I came up with the idea of putting a roll pin or more likely a little piece of the 8mm bar though the main shaft to act as a driver for the wheel which would be held in place with a shaft collar. I’d probably need to remove the disc sander attachment to use the machine as an edge / bobbin sander but that didn’t seem like much of a problem.
So, without further ado here’s the design…
Doh! The motor (light green bounding box) is so huge that it makes using the drive wheel as a bobbin sander impossible. I would only be able to access about half the bobbin maximum which makes it little better than the Axminster belt sander.
I’ve had to increase the size of the drive wheels to 80mm and the top of the sanding bed is no 3mm aluminium plate. This is the first design that is built around the actual component sizes which all seem to be huge. I think I’m going to have to ditch the disc sander attachment, I’ve half convinced myself that I can do all the same things with appropriate fences and the machine running in edge sander mode. Hope I’m right.