This is as far as I got with my belt sander in my last video
I also went to the metal supermarket, and I got
a piece of sheet metal three millimeters thick
to fit underneath here,
and that's the backer for sanding, that won't wear out
as quickly as the wood, but the belt is not consistently
against there, so maybe I should raise that up a little bit.
But, before I got that, I experimented with using
a piece of laminate flooring, and the surface of laminate
flooring is actually quite tough and if I stick that in here,
that actually works quite well, and I sanded a piece of wood
at length right here, to see if it would cause any wear,
and I haven't seen any noticeable sign of wear,
so a piece of laminate flooring could last a long time
in one of these.
Unfortunately, it does make more noise, because just being
much thicker, it rubs against it.
and it ages with the tracking.
But, for now, I won't install either of these,
because I need to figure out how to make a stand
that holds this part, and this motor together.
What I'm thinking of is a motor right about here,
and then a box that fits around the motor,
something like this, and a piece of plywood here
that is gonna be the base of the machine.
I need to make some allowance for this clamp here,
so I'll have to cut that out here, and I'll do that
on the bandsaw.
I bought an aluminum pulley to go on here, but this pulley,
here cost ten dollars, which seems a bit much
for just a piece of aluminum, so I thought I'd experiment
with making a pulley out of wood, and here's my blank.
And, now a nail in here, to act as a keyway.
So, this is going a little bit rough, because the motor
keeps vibrating on me.
I want the sides of that pulley to be quite smooth,
so it doesn't wear out the belt too quickly.
I'm actually more concerned about the pulley wearing out
the belt too quickly, than the belt wearing out the pulley,
because the contact surface, where the belt touches
the pulley is all end-grain, and that stuff is very tough.
And, I also used a very dense hardwood.
So, this is how the base, and the motor fit together,
and removing the top, I need to mount that motor on there
with carriage bolts, because I wouldn't be able to get in there
and tighten it with a screwdriver, so the thing
to do is to put carriage bolts in from the bottom
except I have a whole bunch of these jig bolts left over,
and these came from 149-piece hardware kit that I got
from Lee Valley, which has got all kinds of useful knobs,
and such for things like that. This is what's left of it,
I've already used up all the good bits.
And, the main difference for using one of these, instead of
the carriage bolt, is that I need an oblong hole.
Now, I've just got to tension that belt by moving the motor
to the side a bit, and then tighten it up.
So, this is one orientation to use a sander,
but I'm thinking I could also use it as and edge belt sander,
if I just orient it like this.
This part goes on here, but to make sure the air comes in
from above, and not through here, there's this part here.
I could almost call this sander done at this point,
but I still want to build something so I can
lay the sander on it's side, and use it as an
edge belt sander, and maybe at that point,
it will be ready for some green paint.