Homemade contact wheel WIP

[melsdad]

Looks nice! So long as it holds up I think it was a good idea. Nice finish work so far:thumbup:

I think it will hold up fine. I was amazed at how solid the wheel turned out with the 4 pieces laminated together.

I'm going to have to take it off the tooling arm and see how much it weighs. I wanted to do that but I forgot about it.

 

[melsdad]

He used 12 ounce leather glued around the wheel for a cushion.

Do you happen to know how he made the joint with the leather?

I was thinking of trying to skive the edges down so the 2 ends overlap each other, but that would have to be a perfect taper on both pieces or there would be a noticable bump in the wheel while trying to grind

 

[little mac]

Ok, clarify for me. MDF is the stuff that looks like compressed paper, isn't it ?
If so, I think there might be some precautions that should be taken. Maybe I'm being overly cautious but you might want to paint or some how seal all surfaces. That stuff soaks up water/ oil ect like mad and will blister and weaken when it does. The blistering may create an out of balance that could combine with the weakening and possibly have disasterous results.
Earlier was mentioned tacking the ends of whatever wrapping you use. Whoops... I have another problem with that. This stuff won't hold a nail/tack worth a darn and may split if you don't pilot drill very close to the nail size. The centrifical force exerted on the nail/tacks on the circumferance can be quite impressive. Great thought should go into this before hand. Maybe, just maybe, if you pilot drill as close as possible to the nail size and fill the hole with glue before you drive the nail in , it will stay put.
The weight of said nails on the circumferance may cause a balance issue. I kind of doubt it, but it is worth watching out for.
Of course 1500 rpm on that size wheel works out to about 5600 sfm and that's probaly more sfm than you really need. Slower speeds will reduce inertia on the nails and reduce the likelyhood of balance issues.

 

[FTO_dude]

i say just try joining the ends of the leather like the ends of a belt, cut diagonally.
if it fails, you just lost $5 worth of leather. then you can try something else.