Building a 2x72 Belt Grinder From A Kit

what's up everyone today I'm going to be making this 2 x72 belt Grinder from a kit I purchased from housemade industrial this kit comes with everything you need to build the grinder minus the vfd and the motor but their website has a project Resource page that will point you in the right direction to pick up those parts too I'll leave a link to the company's website and YouTube page in the description below the kit comes with a lot of laser cut metal parts that need to be welded together so I'm just double-checking the metal workbench to make sure I got a good flat surface to work on it's been quite a while since I've done any welding so here I'm just using a couple of scraps to make sure I got my welder all dialed in and that I can lay down a weld that doesn't look too awful one note as I get started I built this up watching the housemade instructional video he has on YouTube so if you're going to buy this kit and you're going to build it up I would watch that video for the you know instructions on how to do it the right way in this video I just wanted to share kind of my experiences um and show that you know pretty average skilled person can build up one of these Grinders the first step of assembly is to build up the base and the risers so I'll just go ahead and debur all the parts uh clean up the risers wipe everything down with acetone once all the parts are cleaned up I'll put the risers into the base plate and then I'll use the axle that the grinder is going to Pivot on um to help align the two risers I'll make sure that everything's square and that the risers are G right uh and that the axle uh kind of spins freely between the two I'm using a couple welding magnets to hold everything in place and I'll take another check with my Square uh make sure that that axle spins freely and then I can throw down a couple of attack welds to hold the risers to the base next I'll pull out the square again make sure that everything stayed level and it didn't so I need to grab a mallet and kind of knock it all back in place so throughout this whole build uh it's just a lot of tacking things in place and then remeasuring making sure they didn't deform uh before I moved on to the next step the most important part of this process was to make sure that that um bolt or that axle at the top there stayed U moving freely so once I knew that that was right uh I was able to come back and put you know onein welds or so all the way across the risers into the base once the base was built up then I could move on to the body of the grinder or I think he called it the chassis and uh it's a couple of these um tubes here have to be all put together um you know so same process making sure everything sits level with each other running a couple of tacks on one side flipping it over and running some TS on the other and then once I'm sure everything stayed in place I could run a couple of one-in welds to make sure it was held together forever this part here is called the tracking pillar and you have to weld this little tab on that holds a spring that tensions the belt um here I got it tacked in place and then you're kind of supposed to make sure it's sitting at a certain angle um I started tapping it in the wrong direction and and broke off the tap weld kind of had to start over and do it again but eventually I got it sitting right now all the parts of the body are ready to be assembled so I'm going to use this motor plate and kind of clamp it in place with the receiver tubes and the pillar that I just welded the tab on uh to hold everything aligned and then I can lay down some TS and then come back uh do some full welds flip it over repeat the process uh make sure everything's good one thing I learned uh the receiver tubes I kind of laid in weld a little bit too thick and when I when I was doing this process I learned that that motor plate didn't sit quite right so so I had to come back in and grind away some of the Weld and then uh here you can see me just using the a sander to kind of clean everything up and make sure it all sits level now I'm ready to get the motor plate attached to the rest of the body it gets held together with the four plug Wells you can see the holes here so I'll just go ahead and fill those all in um I think that I welded a little too much a little too fast here and things got really hot and I caused some warping um that I'll explain a little bit later so my advice would be to do one of the plugs and then go slow you know before moving to the next one let things cool down a little bit another lesson I learned is uh I got a little too aggressive with the flap disc here and when I was grinding everything smooth I ended up making this plate just a little wavy looking it's not that big a deal and it really doesn't affect the fit form or function but I'll notice it from here on out so I might end up buying like a a name plate or some type of sticker to put over top of it here I'm adding a couple more welds to the B bottom of the plate I'm not sure this was absolutely necessary since I put those four plug welds in and I don't think this thing's ever coming apart but this is what the instruction said to do so I did it I was having a hard time letting go of that bad flap wheel job I did so I came back in with a scuff pad and Then followed it up with my sander and some 220 grit paper and at least I was able to make it look a little bit better now I was ready to move on to the part of the build that made me the most nervous uh and that's putting the base and the chassis together um you're using these hinges that you can see here and uh and I I just felt like when I was doing a research here that I could really mess this up so I watched the instructional video a couple of times over before I did anything uh and then I I had it playing in the background while I was actually doing the work just to make sure I got this right basically what you had to do is put the hinge Parts in place there's some spacers that go between the risers and the hinge Parts themselves um don't overcrank the axle bolt kind of keep things a little bit loose and then you can kind of lay it down over top of the the frame or chassis uh body whatever we call in this part now uh and then it's just a simple matter of uh you know putting a couple clamps in place uh so that the hinges don't walk around on you or you don't bump them loose and then making a couple attack welds after everything's welded together then you can just take it out of the clamps I was able to set the whole assembly up and then um just check it to be level when it was at vertical and horizontal in this case it was but if it wasn't it's even not that big a deal cuz you can uh there's a couple of little fixes that um Brian house talks about in his video but uh this one worked out pretty good so once I knew it was right then I can come back in and just add a couple more TXS to the uh the hinges themselves and then lay welds in some specific areas uh to make sure it strong enough to to never come apart at this point of the build I'm feeling really good uh got through most of the hard welding stuff and uh now I'm ready to start putting on this tracking arm so uh following the directions again and watching the video as I go um but I get the bolts installed to the tracking arm so that it's you know not a lot of slop in it but it's but it's not overtightened and then it's just a matter of getting the spring installed now I'm installing the tracking assembly and uh actually installing it backwards I might add um but I'll figure that out a little bit later in the build earlier I mentioned that I think that I overheated the um body and the receiver tubes when I was doing those plug welds and here's why I think that happened um these tooling arms came to me um with the kit and the receiver tubes were in the tooling arm so I know they all fit when I got the parts and then after after the plug welds I learned that you know now they don't so I had to run down to Harbor Freight pick up this pneumatic file and then just go inside to the receiver tubes clean up some of the weld that was left over just open up those holes a little bit so that both tooling arms slid into both slots nice and easy and once all that was sorted out I can use this pneumatic file to clean up the inside of the transceiver tube getting ready to install a handle here and there's a small block that needs to be installed into that tube so cleaning up the Weld and then knocking some of the corners off here so that it fits down into the tube uh then I can weld this onto the handle here you can see I'm really struggling to get a good looking Weld and I can't figure out why I had taken a break for lunch turned off the gas to the welder and never turned it back on so pretty awful looking but I did get it ground down um put a good weld on top of it and then was able to get that all ground down smooth the next step is to take the handle and then weld it into this tracking arm once I got the handle on then I was able to um actually get the tracking mechanism installed correctly this time uh use a little blue locktite to hold everything in place and then get the rest of the mechanism all installed this grinder has a coarse and fine tracking adjustment for the belt you just watched me install the fine adjustment and now I'm welding together this knob um that's part of the course adjustment for the tracking the next step is to start building up the platin hardware just consists of these little feet there's one on each side so I'm just kind of lining up the pieces one goes into the slot of the other pretty easy uh and then laying down a couple tacks and then I'll repeat the same steps on the other side once the feet are welded together I can Assemble them to the D bracket I'll use the supplied hardware and these Wing nuts to kind of get everything in place I use my Mallet here just to tap them in uh to their location align the feet to this plate make sure that they're sitting square and then I can use a couple of welding magnets to hold everything in place while I apply some weld once the platins all welded together I can install it to the tooling arm so I'll stick the tooling arm into the um grinder body itself and then go ahead and get these bolts installed I did run into a little bit of a problem here you can see can't get the bolt in through it so um the laser cut part just had like a little tab that didn't get fully cut off during the process so easy enough fix just grab a drill bit um drill out the hole and then make sure the bolt fits and then get it installed to that tooling arm the next step is to build up the work rest and the first thing you need to do is line the two parts to make up the mount uh that the rest will sit in which is just this little piece of square tubing and then a little bracket that gets welded onto the side of it so I'll start by getting those parts aligned um welding them up and then I'm able toh start to lay out the work rest itself the work rest itself consists of this uh notched plate and a riser tube that has to be located in a specific Direction riser tube just sits in the receiver I just weld it up and it allows me to raise the whole work rest up and down the platin so I'll start by lining up um where the Riser is supposed to go get everything kind of tapped in place verify that everything's sitting in the right place with the square one more time and then I'll tack one corner um check it again uh this one moved a little bit on me so I had to kind of tap it back into its spot and then I was able to lay one more tack back down uh in the opposite corner before I applied any more Weld and made this too permanent I took the work rest over to the platin and uh just verified that the work rest sits Square to the platin itself um then I had to kind of push everything in place kind of pull on it a little bit and then once it was leveled out um I was able to take it back over to the bench lay a few more tacks down I didn't want to overheat it um after watching instructional video that's kind of what they recommended just lay a few more tacks down uh to not cause any more warping once the work rest is finished up that's it for the welding on this project so I was quite relieved I don't I think I got through it without making a whole lot of mistakes made a few little ones but not too bad so now I can move on to installing the motor and getting this thing finished up motor's pretty easy um fits right into the holes that the uh that are already cut into to the motor plate so it's just a matter of manhandling it getting into a place tightening up all the bolts and then uh getting a drive wheel installed with the drive wheel and motor put together I can uh put the grinder back to its vertical position and then uh get the tracking wheel installed once I have that installed I'll set the tracking to where it's roughly level or in place uh and then just tighten up the the bolts that hold everything together till the um there's a little bit of resistance on it but the wheel still spins just fine then I'll just kind of repeat that same process on the uh platin Wheels as well you can see there that I did run into another spot where there's just a little bit of U metal left inside the hole wasn't cut perfectly so just got to quickly drill that out and then I can get the platin wheels installed here I'm just uh putting a belt on it seeing how it tracks kind of rough L putting everything in place probably install the tool rest and just kind of make sure everything looks good cuz that's about it for the mechanical assembly part of this and now it's on to wiring the electrical part of this build was uh pretty smooth again I was following a couple of videos that housemade has on his YouTube channel that uh kind of walks over using this particular vfd um and I bought the wiring kit from him that came with all the connectors and slices that I needed so here you can see I'm just kind of getting everything uh in place getting the splices in and then I had to squeeze these little tabs to make them fit in the vfd right and then it's just repeating the process for the cord that goes to the motor once I finished up on the vfd I could turn my attentions to the motor uh and get everything wired up there I was able to find a couple of wiring diagrams online so uh I just used that as a reference got everything wired up kicked on the vfd and the motor seems to be working good for a finish on this grinder I'm going to just wipe everything down with acetone and then use a product called penetrol which is a additive you add to paint to make it flow better um but I've always used it on raw steel and in fact uh the housemade instructional video that's how he finished the grinder at the end um I've used this stuff on all my bare metal stuff including the bench that I'm building this on and this Wilton Vise that I have I restored this Vice about four or five years ago and uh just left it bare metal like this put that penetrol on it and it hasn't rusted it just gets a really cool patina so I'll coat the whole grinder and the same stuff and then hopefully in a few years it uh looks just as good The Next Step I need to do is make a platin for the belt grinder so the um de bracket and plate that I installed earlier will get chewed up pretty quick if I just try to run the belt on that directly so most people use either like a glass type platin or some harden steel uh platin I didn't have any uh tool steel available to me at the moment when I was doing this and I wanted to get working so uh instead I just used this piece of stainless that I have laying around uh and I cut cut it to the right size to fit on the D plate and then here you can see I'm using the belt grinder itself to um straighten up all the edges and then I we'll um take it over to the drill press cut a couple holes in it um tap those for quarter 20 uh bolts and then I can attach the whole platin to the D bracket uh and plate and this will give me some type of protection um from the back side of the the sanding belt until I get a better solution in place so while I was making that temporary platin I started to notice that all the metal grinding dust that this thing was creating uh really could do some damage to the vfd and after a little bit of research um I found a couple of solutions to enclose them uh this one came from housemade industrial uh and he had some instructions and stuff on how he uh closed everything into an ammo can so here I am just uh drilling out the holes to put the wiring through I got this little 3D uh printed face plate I cut away the spot where that's going to in the top of the can uh then I was able to come back use that pneumatic file that I picked up earlier in the build that thing's already started to uh earn its value in the shop um but I got everything cleaned up um that face plate fully installed was able to start doing some of the wiring uh and get everything enclosed into that box and closed up uh I think it worked out pretty well and uh everything I've read said that they don't get too hot or anything like that so this should make the vfd last quite a bit longer so once I got everything wired back up I was able to turn it on and get the belt grinder running uh here I am just doing a couple of little uh test pieces round and over corners on some mild steel stuff like that just to see how good it works this machine's got a ton of power and it um was a lot cheaper I think half the price of a production model it took me about 8 or nine hours in the shop so that wasn't too bad and it runs super smooth so I'm really stoked on having it I've wanted one of these for quite a while and I got a lot of projects in mind to use it for uh so I hope you guys like watching the video and if you did uh give me a thumbs up consider subscribing to the channel and I will see you guys in the next video

Channel: Twisted Workshop

Views: 8,137

Keywords: metal working, welding, knife making, grinder, 2x72 belt grinder, belt sander, metal fabrication, maker, diy, blacksmith, revolution 2x72, metal, fabrication, housemade industrial, revolution belt grinder, DIY belt grinder, DIY 2x72 Grinder, blacksmithing, anvil, forge, DIY grinder, Belt Grinder plans

Id: 6x2soVcH5LI

Length: 18min 42sec (1122 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2024