Base ginders/belt grinders/stone grinders DIY

[MontuckyMadman]

So i have it. Gotta drag her home. She rules. Ground 4 pair in no time. Her name is rena. Love it.

[twizzstyle]

NICE!!!! Congrats!!

[fa]

great news!
nice name, it's you the godfahther?
what's her belt speed?

[Mongo]

Its not in boze. Who do you know?

Word around the campfire was that Chalet was selling their base grinder. Thought I heard it was a Fontaine. Guess it is still on the market then...

[MontuckyMadman]

Chalet has a grindrite. Belt and stone and it may be 3 phase. Doubt it. Belt speed is pretty damn fast. I doubt they are selling that one.

[MontuckyMadman]

so I ground 3 pair tonight and ordered some new belts.
Really exciting to have this device.
This would be hard to make and take a while.
Worth 1K easy.
It is a little narrow but the autofeed is key.

[gladegp]

Ok, bringing this post up again.
I really want a wide belt grinder which can be used for both woodwork and rough basegrinds, without spending $1000.

New concept:


Tell me if you see any obvious flaws.
What RPM would be suitable?

Thinking of using these parts:
Rollers: http://www.ebay.com/itm/360203323045
Axle from the motor: http://www.ebay.com/itm/110779215351
Bearing units for holding the axles on the non-drive side: http://www.ebay.com/itm/150220035195

[skidesmond]

Not sure I understand the drawing 100%. But why not something like this?
The only major draw back I see is no dust pickup of any kind. But with care you could grind a base on it.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pump-Pneumatic- ... _500wt_965

[gladegp]

Yes, that's an easier option. But I've drawn a belt in my design, I don't know if it was obvious.

I could easily just use the drum by itself but my thought was that the belt with a support underneath would provide a nice and flat grinding surface to get a flatter base. Both in length and width direction of the ski. But I don't know if it is necessary. You tell me

[twizzstyle]

You're just doing a direct drive from the motor? You will probably have to gear it down, it will be going too fast.

What HP motor?

You'll need a skew adjustment on the non-driven drum, otherwise if your two drums aren't EXACTLY parallel, the belt will just fly off.

[twizzstyle]

Sorry, I didn't realize those drums were so small, that might not be too fast. My grinder has a belt from the motor to the driving drum, and the drum pulley is about half the diameter of the motor pulley gearing it down - BUT my driving drum is like 18" in diameter, not just a few inches.

You'll definitely need a hard flat surface under the middle, those inflatable drums will have give to them. You need a raised flat surface in the middle of the belt, that's what mine has.

You can see the belt support under the belt on my grinder in this photo:

[gladegp]

Have you built that? Very nice!

I was hoping to do direct drive as that would save me a lot of money. Then I would only need that $20 arbor instead of pulleys, drivebelt, axle, bearings and so forth.

The engine I was hoping to use is an old 1 hp engine which I can get for $40. I just don't know what the shaft looks like on that one and if I can cet an adaptor coupling. It's 1450 RPM

Skew-adjustment is noted, thank you very much. I'll have to think about how I can incorporate that. I have a small hope that the inflatable drums will e slightly convex when highly inflated and therefore keep the belt tracking like a bandsaw blade tracks on bandsaw wheels.

I know the drums are small but I don't know where I could get good ones. Where did you get yours?

I'll try to incorporate a flat surface in the middle. My machining skills are fairly low though and I havn't got access to a metal workshop or anything like that so I'll just have to see what I can manage. Most definately nothing as fancy as the one you showed

[twizzstyle]

I didn't build my grinder (although I did build the autofeed from scratch), it's an old Toko machine I got for $100 that was completely trashed. I stripped it completely down to nothing and rebuilt it to like-new condition, I've got a good thread showing how that whole process went. It's a great machine, but I'm having motor issues right now.

Good call on the drum convexity, that might be enough to keep the belt tracking.

Where are you located? I have a metal lathe, and a shaft adapter is an easy thing to make.

Here is my grinder restoration thread:

http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2437

[gladegp]

I remember I looked at that thread a long time ago but I had forgotten it. I will look at it to see if I can get any tips. It's a nice machine you've got.

I'm in Europe but I can probably fix an adapter locally if I need one. But thanks anyway

[petemorgan(pmoskico)]

THE ABSOLUTE WORST PART about not having my own base-grinder is when I drop off my skis off to get a base-grind and some dumb-ass wanna-be ski-tech tries to tune up your skis and does a fcking horrible job.

I dropped off a pair of skis at the stertavants in tacoma. (yes i know they are the 1 %, but i had no choice). I had talked to the head ski-tech and he sounded like he knew how to tune a raw ski. BUT evidently, some other dumb-ass tuned the skis and did a really crappy job. He did not smooth out the slight crevasses in the bases (it looked to me like he probably made like 5 passes total, and probably only used one grit) and he didn't even grind the edges. AND, he had applied to much pressure on the tip and tail and it is thinner now on the tip and tail. (typical mistake, I see it all the time from inexperienced ski-techs) i have seen worse though. In greenwater, the snowboard tuning went all the way down to the wood in the tip of one ski.

I am sick of getting cheap (or free) base-grinds that fcking suck. and i don't want to pay top dollar to an expert ski-tech when i know i could do it myself if i had the right equipment.


Bullsht.