Glue well with roller

Darren Wright

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A while back I was watching one of the "how it's made" shows where they were making snow boards by laminating planks. There was a motorized glue well with a roller for applying glue to one side of the plank, which gave me an idea for my high chair arm glue-ups.

Started with some maple for the roller, turned to 1 7/8", pins are 5/8"
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Next I cut out the well part and two sides. I used a 3/4" forstner to rill out slots for the roller pins in the sides. Everything was sanded smooth before assembly as I plan to wax the pin slots, well, and sides of the roller really well to make the clean up a little easier.
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As shown here, the strips will be rolled across from right to left, my thought is that any excess glue will get pulled under with movement of the roller. Hopefully it will work as planned as there are about 16 strips per arm to apply glue to.
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Thanks guys, hoping a good coat of wax does the trick for the clean-up. I don't plan to put it on the surface of the roller, just the sides, though I guess it couldn't hurt it.
 
Just a thought ,thinking of surface tension of glue to roller, perhaps a few grooves in the roller would allow glue to leave roller and form lines easier than a single wide line. My thought would it would help with control of glue thickness. I guess u can experiment with how u have it and make change if neccessary.

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Cool, and if it becomes just a prototype, cap the ears, paint it in a wild style and the kid{s} will have a ball spinning it and spaghetti-O's :D
Looking forward to the test results :thumb:

Gee, I thought he was going to put a roll of Scotch Tape on it and use it on his desk.

I am really anxious to see how this worked Darren. You seem to manage to come up with something different all of the time.

Enjoy,
JimB
 
Well, tried it out today, biggest problem is getting the roller to roll, so may have to give Rob's suggestion a try, turn it to fit a piece of a slip on paint roller, or put a motor on it. ;)
I manually spun the roller as I applied it to the strips, and it used up glue quickly from the reservoir and spread out nicely, but I need to turn the edges of the roller a little shy of the sides as it gathers up there and runs down the sides of the base. After about 10 of the 16 strips I did finally just lay a bead of glue down the strip and run it across the roller, that worked well and caught a lot of the mess.

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Maybe instead of depending on the knobs, drill a hole through the sides and center of the roller and use a little metal rod as an axle? Maybe that would let it spin easier?
 
I thought a about that, I've got a few of the roller blade bearings left too that could also lessen the drag. The well could also use a rubber base, couldn't push down too much without it moving on me.
 
Looks very handy Darren. I could have used something like that when I was making cutting boards with lots of thin strips. :thumb:

I agree with Jim on the bearing idea. I think you'd run into problems. I'd be inclined to go with plastic (UHMD or Delrin) bushings and axles instead. They will clean up much easier. Also, all of the glue rollers I've used have a rubber roller surface. I wonder if coating the roller with Plasti Dip would make it a bit more "grippy" and easier to roll with the workpiece?
 
Good point, they are sealed bearings and I'd clean them after, but do have a block of delrin laying around too, much easier to clean up.

I may try one of the one's that Ted linked to as well. :thumb:
 
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