This is as far as I got with my Belt Sander build
in my last video. My intention had been,
when I want to use it as an Edge Belt Sander, I flip it
around and then flip it over,
and that way, I still have the controls at the top,
and I can get the belt off towards the top.
But, the problem with that is, now the belt is moving this way,
which might be hard to get used to, and the dust port
moves to the other side, which is a real problem,
in terms of running the hose. So, I figure a better method
would be to just flip it down like this,
but that puts the controls towards the bottom,
so I want to move the controls on this side,
because having the controls on the back,
while using it normally really isn't a problem.
The belt tensioning mechanism works quite well,
and I could just flip it over to put the knob on the other
side, and the tracking, I just have the knob on the other side
of the shaft, but this tracking mechanism is actually
not ideal, because it has a little bit of play in it,
and I always have to turn a little bit past where I need
to go, so it takes some back and forth to adjust it.
Also, there is a bit of friction in here that needs
to be overcome. So, ideally I would have
this always, say pushing in one direction, so that as soon
as I let go of the knob a little bit, it moves back.
And, so I've come up with a modified tensioning design,
where I've got the threaded rod pulling here,
and this is applying force asymmetrically,
and then I'll have a screw that pulls it this way,
and that way the tracking should be much more responsive.
But, because the tracking is actually going to change
the tension a little bit, with the asymmetric load,
I also have these wooden springs in here to make it
have a little bit of give.
With the belt part way on in there,
I can figure out where the normal position of the roller is
clamp that down.
These two strips of wood, are gonna form
my wooden belt tension spring,
and then that goes through here to make sure it doesn't
fall off, and then we have this part here,
pushes against here again, with a hole in it to keep the
strip from falling off. And, then tension knob
pulls through here, so that means right here
I'll move it a little bit. This is a good position
for the belt tension lever, Making sure this bolt
is parallel. And, I may have to shorten
this one just a little bit.
The tracking adjustment knob is gonna come to here,
lined up here, so I'm gonna have to carve
a slot in here for that to go through, cause it has to move
side to side, and drill a hole in here.
Now, the other thing I want to do is simplify this design a bit
I had this part here, to help hold this in place,
but I've realized if I just put and a washer here,
I'll have plenty of room for adjustment right there.
Whoops.
Now, with no longer having a part that goes on here,
I'm just gonna glue a couple of pieces of wood on here,
so it doesn't look like there's anything missing.
I'm also covering up the holes that I have on the front,
so that if you can't tell that the design was different
at some point.
These discs are on the shaft pretty tight, so I'm not sure if
a keyway is really necessary, but I'm just gonna put
a cinching nail into the slot that I cut earlier,
trying to get that in without damaging the shaft.
I guess this is as far as it will go in.
So, after getting the tracking right, in this direction,
it's useful to check it in the other direction, because if it
doesn't track the same way then there's twist in the rollers.
And, I can see it's going this way.
and that tells me the roller is too high on this side.
I need to lower this side, because they're not exactly
on plane right now, because if I go forward again,
it puts it back on center. With the belt taken off,
and just looking over it, like this,
I can see that, that roller is a tiny bit higher here.
I've got a tiny piece of wood veneer here,
and I just put a little bit of glue stick on there,
that will hold it in place,
and now I'll just jam that in there
and hopefully that will fix the alignment issue.
This is wandering to the side way too quickly now.
I may have over-adjusted or something.
Yeah, I think that piece of veneer was over-compensating,
it's now mis-aligned the other way around.
So, this piece of veneer was .6 millimeters,
and this piece of pop can shim, is .3,
and hopefully, that will get things close enough.
Now, that's looking better.
It's tracking a little bit off going backwards,
but not as bad as it was before, so I'll call that close enough.
The cool thing is, even though this bit is little bit wobbly,
once it finds the divet, it just goes for it.
Just right to counter-sync a number four screw.
I'm adding a very small counter-sync, because the fibers
of the wood often lift where the screw goes in.
With the tracking problems I've had, every time the belt goes
too far this way, it starts grinding into the wood,
and to prevent the sander from cutting itself apart,
I added these two metal plates, to catch the sandpaper.
And, I'll call it a day at this point.
In my next video, I'll build a base,
so I can use this as an edge belt sander.