black85vette
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- Jan 18, 2009
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The thread on polishing got me to thinking about a project I had in mind. Some of you remember the treadmill I got for free and ripped the motor and controls out of it. It just sat for months because I could not decide what to do with it. Until this weekend.
First thing I did was to remove the cast metal flywheel and mount it on my lathe. It was about .75" thick and had fins on the inside to provide air flow for the motor. I faced it until the fins were gone and I had a flat surface. Ended up being just about .25" thick (almost as thick as the coating of swarf on the floor). Nice thing is that the flywheel was exactly 6" in diameter, just the same size as adhesive sanding discs. So I started with that.
Then I got to thinking about the shaft. The threads are .5" 13 pitch left handed and then it steps up to a larger smooth part. I tried one of my sisal buffing wheels which just happens to have a .5" hole for mounting on a grinder. Fit on there fine. Then grabbed a piece of scrap, drilled and tapped it for the threads on the shaft and it holds the buffing wheel well.
My next thought is to make a backing plate to go on the shaft and mount a 3" 3 jaw chuck on there. This will do two things. 1. I can hold round work and spin it to work with sand paper or files. 2. I have several buffing wheels mounted on arbors with .25" shafts that can be held in the chuck.
At some point I will have to come up with a permanent bench to mount this one. Right now it is just clamped in a really old Work Mate bench. I tried it out with the sanding disc and the buffing wheel. It worked really well and has plenty of torque over a wide range of speeds.
Any suggestions on anything else I can add to it or do with it?Here are some pics of what I have so far.
First thing I did was to remove the cast metal flywheel and mount it on my lathe. It was about .75" thick and had fins on the inside to provide air flow for the motor. I faced it until the fins were gone and I had a flat surface. Ended up being just about .25" thick (almost as thick as the coating of swarf on the floor). Nice thing is that the flywheel was exactly 6" in diameter, just the same size as adhesive sanding discs. So I started with that.
Then I got to thinking about the shaft. The threads are .5" 13 pitch left handed and then it steps up to a larger smooth part. I tried one of my sisal buffing wheels which just happens to have a .5" hole for mounting on a grinder. Fit on there fine. Then grabbed a piece of scrap, drilled and tapped it for the threads on the shaft and it holds the buffing wheel well.
My next thought is to make a backing plate to go on the shaft and mount a 3" 3 jaw chuck on there. This will do two things. 1. I can hold round work and spin it to work with sand paper or files. 2. I have several buffing wheels mounted on arbors with .25" shafts that can be held in the chuck.
At some point I will have to come up with a permanent bench to mount this one. Right now it is just clamped in a really old Work Mate bench. I tried it out with the sanding disc and the buffing wheel. It worked really well and has plenty of torque over a wide range of speeds.
Any suggestions on anything else I can add to it or do with it?Here are some pics of what I have so far.