Yet another grinder question. I know I know...

K

Keithcellini

Joined
Jan 9, 2008
Messages
281
Sorry for my ignorance but I have been trying to find plans to build my own 2x72 belt grinder and the problem i am having are the wheels. I cannot afford to pay several hundred for a wheel and this is how much they seem to be. I do not have 500 to spend on making the grinder, this is why i am trying to build my own in the first place.

In most cases when it comes to Rube Golberging something I am the master but I can't seem to figure out what I can use for the wheel (besides a wheel) :jerkit:
I did see one fellow who made wheels out of wood but i don't think I want to do that. I also saw a video of a guy actually melt aluminum and make a mold. I am not that competent. So, is there any one here that has had the same trouble?

I have been looking at everything with wheels to see if they look as id they may work and I just can't come up with anything.

Help me please.
 
I was having the same sort of problem. I found an old furniture dolly with 5" rubber wheels and took it apart. I knocked the bearings out of one wheel and made a hub out a table saw blade arbor from an old " Shop Smith". The arbor shaft is 1/2" and the Id of the wheel is 1 1/8" I made a hub from piece of plastic that I found at a sawmill dismantle yard. It is not perfect yet but I have high hopes that I can make it work with a little more tweaking.
 
Grizzly tool has a 10" wheel for their machine you can use. Part number G9242 it is a 10" Aluminum /Rubber Wheel For the G1015 belt grinder. http://www.grizzly.com/products/g9242 Its about $70

It is set up for a shaft, but, I got one bored it out for bearings and use it for a contact wheel on my KMG (bought with platen)
 
One of my machines uses that same Grizzly wheel (bought for $40 from a guy on another forum I think), but I bought some high-speed precision bearings off of ebay for about $5 that fit the shaft hole perfectly. I made a spacer to fit between them and used Loctite to permanently fit them flush with the edge. Mounted it on a shaft and it works perfectly.
-Mark
 
Well that sounds better than 250 300 bucks! Merlin, you say that you found a furniture dolly.. well, I have something similar at work, it is a bit larger and the wheels look to be about 10 inches and possibly 2 inches thick but i doubt my boss would appreciate me tearing up his dolly. Maybe I can find something similar. The Grizzly thing sounds to be the most practical thus far but I still am hoping to get away scott free or close. Oh, I do not have a welder either so if anyone has or knows of plans that do not require welding I would appreciate it. Even if you have plans that require welding perhaps I can take bits and pieces from the plans.

From what i can gather is seems as if the KMG is the grinder of choice. Maybe I am wrong but I hear alot about them. Are there any good plans that will show me how to build something close? Thanks again for all the help. Steel workers are AWESOME!
 
The no weld grinder is a lot like the KMG design. A couple in this forum have built from those plans. I have looked at the rolling scaffold wheels at work and think they would make excellent contact wheels. Extremely well built. Next time I come up with one of my fixes and they ask me what I want as an under the table bonus that may be my answer. Last time a 8" elbow on a 40 psi hot condensate line opened up (wore thru the outside radius) and was spraying 200 degree water all over the place. They could not shut the line down for over 15 minutes without shutting down a very major part of the refinery's gasoline stream. Major time and money. Engineers didn't have that course in school. LOL I said I can make a clamp to hold it. They said OK and it has held for 8 weeks now. 3 more till the scheduled shut down. That time I got 6 ft of a 2" hexagon of solid brass. About 80 lbs. Score!!!!!!
 
The dolly I took apart was home made. 2x4s and 5/8 rod axles with washers welded on to hold the wheels on. My dad used it in his shop to move heavy stuff. The Grizzly wheel sounds good except it will make a high speed belt. I don't think my home made grinder would hold up to the speed. For the Idler wheel I took a serpentine belt idler off a junk car.
 
The grizzly wheel does not have to be the drive wheel (not on kmg style) and if it is all you have to do is use

A a 1750 rpm motor as opposed to a 3400
B get a bigger pulley for the driven shaft and a smaller one for the motor. If the motors pulley size is decreased by 25% or the drive pulley is increased by 25% the speed of a 10" wheel would be about that of a 8"

I run stacked pulleys on both of my grinders. Both the motor's shafts and the drive wheel's shafts and I can go from slow to zipping in a few seconds. My belt tension is via a hinge mounted motor and motor weight. When I run a heavy belt with say 36 grit. I run fast and gobble steel as grit numbers go up speed goes down and the grinding is refined also after hardening I go slower and heat builds slower so no temper damage unless I get stupid.
 
What kind of budget are you on for a grinder? The KMG clones are going to cost you more than a Grizzly.

Here's what I don't understand, unless you've just got $500 burning a hole in your pocket why not use what you have?? use a good set of files and sandpaper and you'll have everything you need to make knives. You mentioned you can't afford a $40 HF drill press in an earlier thread but you're going to drop bucks on a grinder. You'll need a drill press to build the grinder unless you're really great with a hand drill.

Please update your profile so we know where you're at, maybe you're near one of us and we can let you see some tools and help you out.

Will
formerly known as badbamaump
 
The wheels are made from aircraft aluminum and has to be turned. The radius of the wheel is smaller on the outside, this is what keeps the belt tracking properly. If you know someone who has a machine shop with the proper machinery they could fabricate one for you. But I believe it would be a whole lot more than $500. :yawn:

You may check with KMG or someone like that and perhaps they could have what you are wanting. I know, this is not much help but it may get you going in the right direction. ;)

Setting up a shop is not cheat and can cost big bucks. So, safe your money and get a little at a time til you achieve the proper machinery and tools to do the job. You can get by doing it the old way. But its better than no way.:thumbup:

One thing I have learned, purchasing the proper machinery and tools is a must if you are into it for the long haul. It saves you time and time is money. Hope this was of some kind of help to you. :)
 
I have built the NWGS from USA knifemaker and it is an excellent grinder, the best part of going with the NWGS for you (IMHO) is that you can have a working grinder for around 250-$300. And then as you save up more money you can make the other attachment that you are wanting.
As far as using wheels that were not designed to be used for this purpose I would steer away from most of them. I have a good friend that went this route and it was a nightmare for him to keep the belts tracking properly. Like my father always said you can buy a good tool once or a cheap tool a 100 times. I think you would be better off using the good wheels and just starting with a flat platten grinder and building the rest as you can.
 
I want to set up my profile but I can't figure out how.... I will try again straight away. Thank you for all the good ideas. Will, I plant on using the tools that I have for now but I feel that the grinder is probably the most important large tool) that I may need so i would like to try and build one some day. I have the Delta 1x42 for now.
 
I mostly use my platen and will say that although my grizzly wheel works great you need to know I bored the shaft hole to fit r82s bearings in my lathe after carefully alignment etc. If I were to use a scaffold wheel you need to remember it is very heavily built and after I fit the new bearings I would probably have to true to od up a bit and then take it to the machine shop at work and have it precision balanced. I do not believe in spinning just anything at high speed
 
I have never even seen a wheel up close, is the plastic or rubber outside soft like rubber or harder like plastic? I am assuming it is more liek a hard rubber compound.
 
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