Insane

I’m going to do it. I’m going to order me a 2 HP Baldor 3-phase motor and a VFD. Sometimes you have to jump into a job on the assumption that a miracle will happen and you’ll succeed. Surely I can build a belt grinder if I try hard enough. I need the motor before I can set up the grinder; the motor’s measurements will affect everything. I could just download the blueprints from the Baldor site, but it’s way easier to plop the motor on the grinder base (2 sheets of plywood glued together, I think) and go from there.

WHOO HOO.

Tell me I’m not crazy. I dare you.

Now I have to go back over the motors I’m watching on Ebay, to figure out which one is right. I’ve decided I need 3450 RPMs, 2 horsepower, 3 phase, TEFC, and 230 volts. Oh, and a 5/8″ shaft, if at all possible. For fifty cents.

Some guy at Practicalmachinist made his own belt grinder. It’s amazing. It’s mostly rust and clamps, but he says it works. He has a 2″ belt on it, but the idlers are at least 6″ wide, and he says he can use different belts on it. THAT got the wheels turning. What if I get a couple of pulleys from a 4″ portable belt sander and use them as my idlers? Presumably, I’d be able to use 2″ belts for metal and 4″ belts for wood. The pulleys and bearings aren’t very expensive.

It’s nearly impossible to find suitable idlers 4″ wide, unless you steal from existing products. I guess I’d also need a belt sander drive pulley.

I also found a guy who built his own drive wheel. He found a piece of 7″ steel pipe, cut it to length, welded a hub into it, and stuck it on the shaft of a Baldor motor. Seems to work. No fancy machining needed. Incredible.