The Shop > Wood & Stuff
Drum/ Thickness Sander
greenie:
--- Quote from: Fergus OMore on January 15, 2015, 06:07:21 PM ---
All very interesting but********************
Just over the hill from where Mr Heslop lives is a huge American owned firm which made rollers from rubber- which was actually blown onto a mandrel and used in the spinning industry- after being ground -precisely.
The foreman was and maybe still is a member of TSMEE.
My belt sander was from Picador and was aluminium or Chinese metal( I forget) and my present ones are actually plastic.
But here's the rub( pun intended), a belt sander is NOT and never has been accurate. There is a lot of information which was written about it elsewhere- probably Model Engineer- but it ain't going to produce FLAT surfaces.
Sorry and all that
Norman
--- End quote ---
I'll agree with you that a BELT sander is not very accurate AT ALL.
BUT your forgetting what is being made here, it aint NO belt sander, it's a drum sander, it's got a rotating drum which does the sanding.
If the rotating drum has been made round and straight, the sanding medium applied so that it is very constant in it's thickness, then the machine can and will reproduce the very same results constantly. Far superior to what a belt sander will ever be able to reproduce.
You can get a drum sander that is very accurate, to with-in the variances of + or - 0.001", I have made one that will do that quite adequately each and every time I use it. These measurements can be proven with a micrometer time after time, so don't try and tell me that it can't be done, -- it can.
vtsteam:
Simon. just lurking here in the peanut gallery, hoping you're doing what you want. :thumbup: :beer:
S. Heslop:
--- Quote from: greenie on January 15, 2015, 05:58:46 PM ---A bit overly ambitious with a motorised in-feed roller
--- End quote ---
Absolutely, but it's the part of the project I care the most about. I've made it so long so I can use a sanding belt as the conveyor surface. There's alot of information on drum sanders where you just push the wood through, but the few people that have built conveyor belts are tragically vague about how they work. Plus i've read a few people saying they were difficult to get working and they eventually gave up trying, and that sounds like a challenge.
As for the stability of MDF, it's really the ideal for stuff like this since it doesn't have a directional grain. If the drum is properly sealed it should hold up fairly well, and if it does warp a bit you can true it up by just sending a bit of sandpaper on a board through (or with a sandpaper conveyor you could just raise the table till it touches). If I used solid wood it'd expand along the grain to make the drum oval shaped, and truing it up would be futile with it going back and forth with the seasons.
--- Quote from: vtsteam on January 15, 2015, 07:06:35 PM ---Simon. just lurking here in the peanut gallery, hoping you're doing what you want. :thumbup: :beer:
--- End quote ---
Haha, thanks.
Yeah i'm trying to build a thing that should be repeatable by anyone else. Mostly I hate seeing videos where a guy uses, say, parts from an old tablesaw to build something else, and I imagine it's equally irritating for people when they see me using a metal lathe in a video about woodworking. Plus it's fun finding ways around problems.
vtsteam:
--- Quote from: S. Heslop on January 16, 2015, 01:16:05 AM ---Plus it's fun finding ways around problems.
--- End quote ---
:thumbup: :beer:
Spurry:
--- Quote from: S. Heslop on January 16, 2015, 01:16:05 AM ---
As for the stability of MDF, it's really the ideal for stuff like this since it doesn't have a directional grain.
--- End quote ---
Have you considered using the green MDF. It's so much more stable than the normal brown stuff. I would hesitate to say it's waterproof, but water resist is how they advertise it.
Pete
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