Hi all this is the Makehaven video for the Kalamazoo 1 by 42 belt grinder
belt grinder and belt sander are pretty much the same except in general about grinders used for
metal belt sander is used for wood it's my sense of the difference between those words the one in
here is so it's in general it used for either shaping or deburring metal so deburring is when
you cut it and then there's a little burl wrapped over a piece of metal on there and just feels like
a sharp edge you want to get rid of because it could cut someone it could hurt another machine so
if you're finishing of easier dressing it up same with wood your dress metal which just means making
it presentable pretty much and easier to work with then this could be the machine we got to belt
grinders in the metal shop the 1 by 42 and the 4 by 48 which is just lighter and more powerful so
this has a few things going on one business back platen area we're just going to push against and
then this is a slack area so let's see you got a cylinder of metal and you didn't want to put
flats on it then what you could do is put on the soft area and turn it so they you have a little
more give to it if there was any rounded you wanna use the soft area and then if you want to
have something squared then you use the back part area this tray can also be adjusted you can put a
wrench on here and change its position it's pretty important that there's a very small gap between
this tray and the belt so even that's a little bit big you could if you had a thin piece of metal you
would want to take this bolt loosen it a little so it can get it just a little bit closer you don't
want it to be grinding into this so you you do want it close enough you don't have a chance of
anything slipping in there as you can imagine if you had a thinner piece of metal it gets caught
and pinched in there then it'll stall the motor or it could pull your fingers in just not a good
time so something thin you can hold higher up so I'll grab this actually isn't terribly thin
but if it were and you could just use the higher ups there's no written skip it pinching if you're
down here then you probably don't want to do anything crazy then certainly you want to make
sure that it can't fit through that crack when you're using this surface you want to make sure
you have a really good firm grip you're not say if I guess you wanna just be holding it way out
here a few reasons you don't have really good control of how hard you're pushing another is
should someone bump into you kind of easy to go into the belt by putting your hand up against
here a really good control of how much modulating in and out just something to know this is not the
final configuration of the tools so you might want to put a clamp on this if you want in a certain
position you're welcome to move it around a little bit I'll get a better orientation for you until we
have it in its final configuration you're welcome to move it around like this whatever you need to
do to either tuber or remove material so these can be pretty aggressive about removing material and
as a notice can do all kinds of metal so versus a bench grinder or a cut-off Mueller exclusively
used for steel this belt can be used or whatever metal you want and yet you don't push so hard you
risk breaking the belts if you do it's not the end of the world is probably not gonna
bring you all that much so make sure this small one you don't want to like take a sharp bed and
push my short bed into a clock belt this is just a piece of cloth with sandpaper on it so those
are some tips for using it with practice you'll find that this probably gets used a lot more than
the bench grinder removes material quickly it it's probably more safer or more durable more
safe more comfortable to use I think now we'll put over how you change the belts so we have a bunch
of belts of different grits with grits the lower the number the the more abrasive it's going to be
either fewer grains of sand on a given square inch which means that the most grits are gonna
be bigger and removing more material a higher grit number so something like 220-grit would be
a finer grit that leaves a smoother finish so if you want remove a bunch of material and use
something like 60 grit that'll just munch through material and then if you want a it's like we have
a smoother finish perhaps when you rust something like that then you would use a higher number we
will have some belts on hand but we're not going to guarantee that they're in great shape all the
time especially with metal you can go through belts pretty quickly someone's making knives
for example you are going to need to buy your own belts we can recommend places to buy them combat
abrasives is a good one and then the size is important so again this is one inch by forty two
inches in length that's its whole circumference and that's all the information that you need but
a lots of the whole world of sandpaper all the different kinds you're welcome to do all that
research in general you don't need anything crazy this is aluminum oxide belt which is like a pretty
standard run-of-the-mill belt some of them will have arrows on it so you look at that when you're
putting the belt on I'm just gonna unplug it while we're working on it just has a switch on the front
we can you see the x10 you're just test fit your top so this is spring-loaded so when you're taking
this off you just want to have a hands on top and then loosen the screw in the back and now
it's it's loose so we'll take this front piece off so you can see I'm gonna push down and remove the
belt release slowly so now that's off ever belt this belt still has a little life left in it not a
ton it's probably more good than it was but it's just an aluminum oxide belt it doesn't say
anything and terribly interesting but it doesn't have a direction on it some will have arrows and
you want to make sure it develops getting this way I make sure the arrows line up so it's pointing
in that direction so you'll put this on make sure that the grid is facing outwards we don't want the
grid facing inwards there's a rubber wheel on the bottom which is the drive side and this this is a
pretty good well I mean you you'll hear when it's spinning it's it's a pretty well-balanced machine
meaning anything it has spinning parts if it is imbalanced if one side something's heavier another
it'll rattle a bunch this is pretty well balanced you can even see here on this rubber wheel that
they did a balancing process on the rubber so they drilled a little hole there because this side was
a little heavier they made it lighter and so now it spins really nicely so that's that's just one
sign the visit pretty good quality tool so again I'm gonna push down on this and get it in front
of the platen this is an example of an arbor if you watch the arbor press video so this pulley
or this this wheel was pushed onto an arbor to remove it you'd use the bearing puller but now
because it's not fairly well aligned so you can spend a little bit by hand and because
it's spring-loaded its tensioning itself and what's key this is pretty wide so that's not
a great indicator the better indicators on the bottom so I'm just going to spin this by hand
until it's sitting right in the middle oh and what I'm adjusting is this angle so I'm twisting this
so right now if I spin it it's off to the right a little bit so I'm turning to the left and now
it's right around the middle so I'm just going to tighten up on this screw and now we'll switch it
on one second putting back in close this guy and we can see that it is fitting the right
so it's sitting pretty well centered that's good you can hear the drill press traveling
but this itself is pretty balanced and once it's clamped onto a table it will be really
good so for grinding material first of all look at I keep it on the platen to modulate
now it has a nice shiny ends but it smell it confers especially the hot man so you want to
make sure you point it downwards but pop he'll just grab and slam down hurts you're gonna go
around and I'm using the soft part without the hardback to get a nice smooth edge if I'm down
here there'd be sharp edges on the corners and now the birds are all gone if you look closely
you see it's rounded over just a little bit into the other side mystery rocks is pretty
much at once once you feel like you have to push to get it to cut or you feel like it's
just a smooth there's no grit left and that's a good time to change the paper in terms of
PPE obviously glasses you're doing a bunch of grinding a mask is a good idea you don't
wanna be telling bunch of us we're doing one quick deeper and you don't need to put
on a mask ears it's obviously not very loud gloves in general we're not using them in
the welding obviously is a different story so just risk it with something getting pulled in
there we don't want to mess around with and that's that's the story thanks for watching