Dave Black
Member
- Messages
- 638
- Location
- Central PA
I decided I didn't like the spindle sander I build a few years ago, that one was built in a bit of a hurry out of a small drill press, so I decided to start from scratch. I dont have any build pictures to show the process but its pretty straight forward. I started with an I beam shape made of plywood, on one side I mounted 3/4" bore pillow block bearings to hold the arbor. The arbor is 3/4" cold rolled bar stock that I cut bolt threads onto the end. On the other side of the I beam I mounted the motor, there is a slot through the I beam so the belt can go between the motor and arbor. The whole plywood I beam assembly is mounted to the frame of the machine with ball bearing drawer slides. I got 4 slides and added the ball cages and bearings from the 2 extra slides. That makes the slides more rigid. I used a small gear motor for the oscillation, there is a small crank arm on the shaft of the gear motor, and a rod goes from the crank arm to a stud on the I beam. There are ball bearings on both ends of the rod to reduce friction and let the gear motor work more easily. I also added a spring that helps to hold the weight of the motor and arbor. I used an extra piece of plastic covered mdf for the table of the sander and devised a "zero" clearance insert for the different sized drums. This machine will handle rubber drums from 1" up to 4" in diameter and 9" tall. I can also stick 3/4" sanding sleeves right on the arbor. I have a 4" dust port on the machine and it does a really good job. I left an extra 1/4" all the way around on the zero clearance inserts to help with the dust collection and it works well, I guess they are not really zero clearance inserts then, maybe 1/4" clearance inserts? For some reason the image uploader rotated the pics all wrong, sorry