Mill Pullies

[Chazz]

I plan on beefing up my mill from .75HP to 1HP and, while I'm at it I also plan to replace the spindl bearings.  Currently, the motor and spindle are 'geared' together and I read somewhere about changing to belt drive for smoother\quieter operation.

Question: What are the pros\cons of steel\cast iron vs. Alu for the pullies? or one of each even?

Thanks for the help.

Chazz

[Brass_Machine]

Hi Chazz 

1st, Welcome to the collective

To answer your question about the belt conversion, I have one on my X2. Much quieter and much better. I don't know how I lived without it. I purchased mine and it is 100% aluminum. I easily have several hundred hours of hard milling. No noticeable wear on the pulleys and I am on my 1st belt. Several guys here have made them. There are plans floating around on the internet. I believe those are 100% aluminum. When you do the conversion you have the option of leaving the lever in neutral or removing the gears. I removed the gear...

What mill do you have? What are you using for the motor/controller?

Eric   

[Chazz]

Hi Eric, thanks for the welcome.  I have a Craftex (from Busy Bee Tools - Canada) CT039 9x20 Lathe (twin of the Grizzly 4000) and I have the Craftex CT129N Mill\Drill which is the same as the Grizzly G0704 (except the Griz has 1HP motor and R8 spindle whilst my machine has a .75HP DC motor and MT3 spindle. 

I am also tempted to make a new R8 spindle. I am currently using the stock controls.

The main reason for the change is from the general comments I've read about how much smoother and quieter the machine runs, which, I believe should translate into better finishes, especially face milling.

Thanks again,
Chazz

[dsquire]

Chazz

Welcome to MadModder Chazz. Good to see you active and posting about your machines and projects. While I don't have the machines that you do there are a few others that probably do. I am sure that there will be others along to offer comments on your setup. What part of Canada  are you hiding out in? Myself I am from Kitchener, ON. Enjoy the forum and we look forward to your future projects and posts. 

Cheers 

Don

[Brass_Machine]

Just looked the mill up. Nice unit that...

Mine is a bit smaller, but you are spot on with the quieter operation etc...

Post up a thread in the intro section and tell us about yourself.

Eric

[stovebolt]

Hi Chazz,  I have an X3  ( Grizzly Go463), one of the first mods was the belt drive, I made the parts to the specs in an article posted on a Yahoo group and this was the result,


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I rechecked all the numbers, belt, pulleys and original gears, all the numbers matched. So I'm guessing the center line distance on my mill is different from that of the author. As you can see the first pulleys were from scrap anyway, my first foray into timing belts.   

 I used this calculator to figure out the number of grooves/teeth for the belt I had - 9mm - 5mm x 300 HTD   

http://www.sdp-si.com/cd/default.htm

And this is the end result,  as you can see this is a fixed distance so I lucked out.  I ended up with a 34 and 36 tooth pulley   


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

The hard part for me was figuring out the actual radius to drill at, as it turned out I was off, too big but I was using an 1/8" drill so I just used an 1/8" end mill to clean it up, oh and the other hard part was getting the right pitch using what I have, a spin index, it doesn't do 34 but the original drive gear was 34 so I index that and used a scribe in the collet.