How to Set up your Harbor Freight 1x30!

hey guys this is cliff uh long overdue but i think we're finally ready to start getting going with new videos uh we've got the uh studio area all cleaned up i've even got a new shirt so we know we're professional now uh we're gonna go ahead and start this video series and we're hoping to do one once a week so you can enjoy it on sundays first video of the new series is gonna be back to the very basics it's a one by thirty we're gonna go ahead and this is straight out of the box and this is what you need to do to take your machine as you get it out of the box and tune it up and get it ready to be used and we'll start here in just a minute let me get going thanks [Music] okay let's just start with a little walk around on the machine we've got our basic ac motor this is the tracking tension knob and swing arm around here we got our drive wheel this is the upper idler and this is the back swing arm idler this is probably the most critical part we'll get to that last and focus in on that first thing let's see how it runs straight out of the box [Music] okay so confirmed it does run and then i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to take the uh safety shield off and we're going to do some stuff to this up here as well and make this more useful that's in the optional section later on okay i had to get a little more set up there i've taken the belt off but as you can see this tracking tension arm does not move and it's supposed to it's spring loaded so what we need to do is we need to loosen this bolt right there got a socket got a quick little crescent on the back side all you gotta do is just crack that loose and now this will actually cause tension that's your belt tensioning method and we'll talk more later about how it can move forward further to allow some tight belts to get on there and the scotch brites and stuff but this is the very first thing and the most common thing that people don't know that they got to do and that makes it so the machine can run and this is how you put the belts on and off the machine as you squeeze here i like to go put the belt on the top put it around the front hold it with my thumb and then i squeeze and slide the belt right on and then you're good then you're ready to go the other thing that will happen when you do that is now the tension of the belt is pushing this idler wheel up into the frame this is a design flaw or maybe it's a manufacturing oversight in how the casting works but the idler tire is now rubbing against the frame right here and i'm going to go ahead and pause and i'll zoom in and show you that area and we can see we've loosened this tracking tension so it can move but when we move to the forward it actually hits the frame of the machine and i'm going to go ahead and try and zoom in a little more and then we will see what we can do to make that happen the first thing we want to do is we want to get the spring out of the way and now you can clearly see that sharp edge and that's that hits right up against that wheel and what we need to do is we just need to grind a little bit of material out of here and that's going to stop the wheel from hitting that part of the frame and it acts like a break okay here you can see the sharpie green sharpie marker on green paint but you can see the spot where i'm going to grind this out and i won't show the grinding i'm just going to go ahead and use a diamond barrel dremel bit you could use a hand file whatever you got available it doesn't take much it's just soft aluminum okay that just took just 30 seconds or less and i took and i ground out the material right in through here and then i move the wheel all the way forward and check and see if it spins or if it's got free free range of motion and now i now i actually have it'll spin freely when it's pushed all the way forward that means when i put the belt on there and it's under tension all the way to the front it won't pinch and bind on the frame so that's a that's a huge difference that'll make a big difference when we get to the scotch brite belts later on they'll fit better as well we want to go ahead and take that spring and put it back in tuck it in from behind tuck it behind the idler wheel and then it just goes right down right down in that little spot right there that little spring then means this whole area is spring-loaded and it doesn't bind on the frame so we are chicken dinner winner let's go on to this next step okay so i know i'm being a little redundant but it's just worth repeating one more time the most critical things for this machine to operate correctly are that it has a free range of motion on the tracking and the tension arm so they can put tension on the belt and that when it is fully in the front that the idler wheel does not pinch or bind against the frame and you just grind a little bit of material out that's 98 of what needs to be done after that what i would do and caution is advised but to true the wheels that are on the machine you need to have some sort of stable surface and then you apply uh sandpaper to the wheel you got to be super careful this wheel's spinning at 30 or 40 miles an hour 34 450 rpms so you do want to be careful but if you're careful enough you know you can just true these wheels up even even if it's just a you know an on-the-fly kind of truing by turning the wheel on i'm being really careful to keep my fingers clear and i'm pushing ideally you'd want a firm solid block but i'm also following the contour of the wheel and just in a couple minutes we'll go ahead and we'll check and see what that did to the surface so that surface there was a couple spots where there was high and low spots on the wheel and i'll go ahead and zoom us in so you can see that part hopefully that shows up on the camera uh this is now smoothed out and you can feel it it's smooth there was some casting marks and some other things that were in the way and now we've gotten rid of those casting marks and it's going to run smoother just by taking that 30 seconds and doing that i will show the upper idler wheels as well and that is arguably a little more tricky again if you're not comfortable doing something like this uh you know don't don't uh take risks that you're not ready to uh comfortable doing but here's the machine itself the thing you don't want to do is you don't want to get the sanding surface caught up in the belt that's spinning around but if you hold it down lower then it's safe i'll start with this one it's spinning this way it does want to pull on it and you do want to be careful that you don't get it sucked in but just doing that for 30 seconds will make a huge difference and this one here is also the same again completely optional caution is advised uh you know hazard at your own risk the difference that we'll be able to see in the wheel is now it's it's much smoother and it's rounded off just by doing that it's gonna so there you got a basic truing of the wheels and functionally this machine would be ready to go you put your platen in place and we'll talk i guess we'll talk next about the platen and how to adjust that forward of the belt i think before we do the platen adjustment and where it should sit we should take a look also at the tracking the first thing i look at is to make sure we got about an equal distance even if it's off the machine which it is at the moment then the knob here will adjust the tracking left to right so what i'm looking at is that the tracking is here on the wheel it's straight on this wheel but down here it's about two millimeters off to the inside so what i would do is i would take this upper idler and i would move it out just a couple millimeters and i'll go ahead and get that tool and i'll show you that close up okay so to get these front two to where they're lined up i'm gonna take this three millimeter allen wrench we're gonna loosen this up and i'm gonna move this out about one millimeter to two millimeters and then i'm going to tighten it back down and then we'll see if both of these are lined up so the belt the belt can go in and out but we want to make sure that the wheels are in the right position as well so now i've got the top the belt if i turn it sideways maybe you can see a little better so on the top i learned the belt is square on the wheel and at the bottom it's not overhanging on the left or right also i still have tracking and tension adjustment either way but this means that it's centered and squared on the belt okay and with those things in place i can go ahead and we can start looking at the positioning of where to put the platen let's take a look at the platen where to place it now if you're using with an angle guide the angle guide itself will be a little thicker so you may want to have the platen be back just a hair to leave room for the angle guide to fit down over the top i personally i prefer to have the belt and the platen itself be perfectly flush and so what i do is i bring the belt straight up until it just touches the platen or the platen touches the belt and then you can mark it mark it with a sharpie marker however you want and make sure it's side to side front to back and get that into position a little bit of tension is good if it just presses on the belt just a little bit but you definitely don't want it out like this or putting heavy pressure on it that's just going to cause an excessive amount of friction so get it like this mark it in place and then screw it down and lock it into position okay so we got our platen attached and i did leave it with just a little bit of a gap so i can show you what it looks like with the angle guide and i like to set mine down at about 15 to 17 degrees everybody's got their own choice we'll talk about the angle guide more in sharpening and edge leading and edge trailing in upcoming videos but right now i just want to kind of walk through this and again sorry it's been long overdue um so with the angle guide in place the thickness oh they're tight when they're brand new the thickness of the metal is about what you want and maybe it's a half mil um again i go top top idler bottom idler left thumb to hold it back and then i pinch on the right and it's ready to go you can actually hear it's running quieter than they do when they're stock some of that is the trisack belt now i still think this motor is too fast but at this point you're up and running and you could you could do you know i did sharpen for a couple years before i did it you just have to have a really light touch as you approach the tool very quick pass a couple quick swipes is all it takes but that's about twice as fast as i like to sharpen you again you can do it there's no we're not concerned we're not grinding we're not holding it in place there is no discoloration of the metal there's no severe heat damage but it's not ideal so let's go ahead and um we'll look at the next things that we can do this is the basic setup for the machine you now have tracking and tension you've got it properly calibrated and adjusted and it's smooth and it's ready to go uh optional things that you could do at this point that i'll demonstrate next would be to remove the top part of this metal that that exposes this upper idler area and then you can use that for doing uh concave blades recurves and things like that where you want to get in and use this maybe for scotch brite and other things as well so i'll go ahead and pause and then we'll get that prepped and that'll be some of the last stuff we showed today okay i figured i'd just wing it we'll do this live here and i'm just going to take the little three millimeter or little three allen wrench take this out get it out of the way take my sharpie i'm gonna take and just mark a line straight across and then get my safety goggles on not those safety goggles those safety goggles now i'm just going to go ahead and cut this right up hopefully it's not too loud the other thing i like to do is i like to remove this front section here as well right through here and you can see why uh it's so that you you expose this whole wheel and then you can use that wheel so i'm gonna go ahead and just i'll do that off camera and then i'll bring you back right as i get done [Music] okay so with that done this will when it's locked into place there we go now you can see let me zoom in you can see how much of the wheel is exposed so that when you put your belt on you now if you want to do recurve or hollow grind now you can actually come up here and at the top of the thing you can get full access to do scratch removal or zero grinds holograms things like that it makes this whole area a useful part of the machine where it wasn't useful at all before thoughts on part one uh these are typically how they come when you get them out of the box there's usually a couple things that aren't quite you know ready to go with them it's a fifty or sixty dollar little machine but with a couple minutes in a little time you can actually make it a useful tool you can see how the spring-loaded action is now it's freely moving and it should sound like uh you know quite a bit quieter [Music] that's the same machine so we haven't done anything special to it and you got the upper area that you can use now as well the wheels feel smoother it's running truer and overall it's ready to go on to phase two i'm going to go ahead and just pause right here clean up the workbench get out the new motors and the new drive wheels and idlers and we'll swap those out straight in no hocus pocus it should be an easy swap out and then you guys can see uh the benefits and the effects of doing that for the next part for part two uh bear with me it's been a while and hopefully this is watchable i'm gonna turn it over to my uh professional editing team who's now a sophomore in high school so hopefully he's got his skills together and we'll see you guys for the next one thanks for thanks for watching aloha [Music] you

Channel: Curry Custom Cutlery

Views: 34,894

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Id: IjZWfEzJjA4

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2022