Variable Speed Burnishing & Buffing Station Project

[RawhideLeather]

Well, I got tired of constantly having to chuck up my burnisher in my drill press which I use for other things so I decided to try and make an fairly inexpensive burnishing/buffing station. Ideally I think it should have been mounted so that the burnisher sticks out past the end of the workbench for better access but I have extremely limited space unfortunately right now. I also think that the side pressure on the drill press bearings weren't doing them much good. I make thick stuff (knife sheaths) so I had to use a good bit of pressure when burnishing. Anyway, here is the ugly but serviceable result. This is a temporary set-up and I intend to do a better job of mounting when I get moved into another place. I got the DC motor, controller board and all of the wiring and controls from a free Treadmill from Craigslist. The treadmill no longer worked but the motor and controller was still fine which they usually are I read somewhere. I purchased the bench mandrel, motor pulley and buffing wheel from Grizzly Tools and got the drill chuck and V-belt from a hardware store. It works well enough for my needs and I like the variable speed although unfortunately there's no way of knowing the actual speed really, I just played around with it till I found the speed I wanted. I do get a small amount of wobble at the end of the burnisher but not enough to affect what I do with it. This was done on a budget and I'm sure I spent less than $100 for everything. It was a pretty formidable project for me but I eventually "got er' done". Of course you could put anything you want on either end of one of these. I was thinking I might put another chuck on the buffer side (keeping the buffer on it) and use it to wind bobbins with.

Now for the scary stuff: USE EXTREME CAUTION IF YOU PLAN ON BUILDING ONE OF THESE. DC VOLTAGE IS VERY DANGEROUS AND CAN KILL YOU!!!

Ok, having said that, I know practically nothing about electrical things and got the instructions on how to hook things up from an instructables.com posting here:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Use-a-Treadmill-DC-Drive-Motor-and-PWM-Speed-Contr/

Lots of photos and info there. I also made sure that the dang thing was unplugged when fooling around with any of the wiring or controller board. Common sense should prevail here.

The only chuck I could find locally with 1/2"-20 threads was a Craftsman pro model made for a hand drill for $20. It was a bit sloppy on the fit so I used a lot of Teflon tape on the threads which helped. I had ordered a cheap one from Grizzly but it is a piece of Chinese junk with a whole lot of run-out or wobble. Also I had to send the first mandrel back because it had noticeable wobble in the shaft. I requested a straight one be sent and the 2nd one they sent was much better. I haven't used this tool much yet as I just got it going but I have noticed that the mandrel shaft gets pretty warm after a few minutes. Not sure if that is normal or not as I never used a bench mandrel before. I purchased the mandrel with the ball bearings BTW.

Here was the hardest part - once I got all of the parts rounded up. The shaft on the motor was several thousandths of an inch over 5/8" as it was metric. I hooked everything up temporarily so I could use the motors power to turn the shaft as I sanded it down enough to accept a standard 5/8" pulley as I couldn't find a metric one - yeah... it took about an hour I believe to get it to size.

I'm not really advocating anyone building one of these as you may be disappointed in the end result depending on a lot of factors. It seems to work quite well for me and what I do but it was a bit of a challenge at times to be honest. Hopefully it will last me a while. I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this but just thought it might help someone out a bit to post it. There's a lot of different ways to skin a cat - this is just one way.

Oh yeah... other scavenged parts from the treadmill include lots of nice black metric nuts, bolts, washers, etc.

2 nice bearing rollers which could be used for sliding supports for woodworking and the rubberized tread material would make a nice liner material for toolboxes, etc.

The bench mandrel I purchased has a 1/2" shaft. There is a bit of flex when pushing hard. Might should have gone with the 5/8" shaft size.

Controller board, etc. from the treadmill. Installed upside down underneath the workbench in a Tupperware container (like I said - cheap). Took lid off for photo.

Left - 10k pot (potentiometer) bought at Radio Shack for about $5. This is the speed control.

Middle - Fuse

Right - On/Off switch of course. Came with the treadmill wiring harness as did the fuse.

Motor Specs.

[BigRiverLeather]

Thanks for posting this. I've been procrastinating on putting one of these together. I have the motor and like you, need a place to mount it, the shaft, bearings and pulleys. All easily found at my local Tractor Supply Co.

[Shorts]

Good work putting this together.

I was thinking of a similar project with a very well used table saw....except I ended up selling it at the garage sale because someone asked about..."sure, take it".

I'm still looking though at either building my own or just buying something off the market to hurry up and get something going. It takes a while to burnish items with only one hand to use. Time to upgrade.