hey Adams happened here in my cave with another tool tip I'm gonna tilt this
down just a little bit there we go I wanted to talk about lazy susans yes
lazy susans I know over in my mold-making area I have a stack of
drawers and those drawers actually are old airplane food carts and the labels
on their drawers are all drawn at Sharpie on the very top is one labeled
lazy susans and visitors to the shop frequently look at that and ask me are
there really lazy susans in there and I like to say yes there is I open it up
and show them and sure enough there are lazy susans the idea of having a wide
bearing surface that you can attach into something is super common in the maker
world and there are a lot of different options out there but a bunch of years
ago when I was making my own r2d2 I came across one that I still love more than
pretty much any other these lazy susans are like kind of the standard fare you
could get at a hardware store and they're fine my issue was them as
obstacle EU no stamped metal with ball bearings in the middle same thing over
here and because they're stamped sheet metal that they don't have a lot of
tensile strength so if you put this on something you could certainly spin a
tray but you don't want anything tall right you want you want all of the
weight to be at the level of the lazy susan you don't these don't allow you to
build upwards however I found a large bearing that is reasonably priced and
does give you that kind of functionality and it was made by the lovely people at
Rockland here is a Rockler bearing now just like just like one of these
bearings it has holes and the ability right so this bearing has holes on one
side and then holes on the other to allow you access to holes on the other
so you can basically attach stuff to both sides as long as you've plotted it
out correctly the Rockler bearing is no different it has
countersunk holes here and countersunk holes there plus these little spacers if
you want to use them you don't have to and honestly from a from a material
engineering standpoint these are really impressively
rigid if I was going to have to build a mini gun for instance this is the kind
of bearing I would go use right away a pair of these stack five inches apart
I'd be able to support a lot of weight out of the other end so Rockler bearings
have become a kind of a staple in my shop
they make them as small I think I have one that's four inches I don't know if
that's the smallest one they make this is far from the biggest because a few
years ago a few years ago now it's almost 20 years ago when I was making my
r2d2 I came across this Rockler bearing yeah dude this is like a 20 inch bearing
seventeen and a half inches that's a seventeen and a half inch bearing
that's fantastic they make an even bigger one and it's in the neck of my
r2d2 I also used one as the base of my captain's chair of my Star Trek
captain's chair I love these bearings and this bearing right now is very very
reasonably priced so I will tell you that I actually keep a stock of several
sizes of Rockler bearings here in the cave just in case I need them because
frankly this is gonna cut it for me I mean sure if I'm doing eating
family-style I'll use this bearing but if I have to do any kind of complex
engineering it's gonna be one of these rocklers I am really glad that they are
still making them that they are still reasonably priced and yeah
for your next maker project where you need something to swivel let me tell you
the swivel on my captain's chair it does not waver or
at all it feels very secure as you move back and forth on that and of course
we've already established that the captain's chair makes you sit like a
captain so I like to think that that Rockler bearing inside that captain's
chair it's like 15 percent of the experience of feeling captain Lee and
like you're on a fine piece of equipment that is a quick and dirty tool tip thank
you guys for joining me I will see you next time