Make an Electric Pottery Wheel from a Scrap Washing Machine

behold my new pottery wheel now I know what you're thinking that's not a new pottery wheel that's an old washing machine none of those words were correct but I promise you I'm going to attempt to make this into a pottery wheel I do not promise that I will be successful so I guess we'll call that dramatic suspense sure why not okay so here's why I think this will work I'm gonna draw you a little schematic here a washer top-load washer has a bunch of parts this is gonna be pretty bad very simplified here's the inner tub here's the outer tub this part spins this part stationary it's attached to a frame which goes down to kind of hold this and you know come kind of comes under here also and down here is a big pulley so how this works there's a motor on this washer the motor is off to the side and spins a pulley wow this is a terrible drawing spins the pulley which spins this big wheel the big wheel spins this shaft which goes through some bearings and seals to spin this there's also bearings down here and there's a seal here to keep water and soap and crap out of the bearings and this has to spin this inner table has to spin in a very high rate of speed like during spin it can be like hundreds of rpm some washers up to a thousand this one probably not but the outer tub stays stationary so this the top of the shaft this is the only thing this top of this shaft has to support the drum full of wet clothes spinning at hundreds of rpm without wobbling too much that the tops of these rub together now this this separation here is only like an inch inch and a half so this is a very stable a very stable kind of shaft and if you spin this it'll spin well actually on this if you spin this wheel it'll spin the whole drum there's a coupler in here that disengages and it'll spin a secondary shaft up the middle only which is attached to your agitator forget all of that that was pointless don't know why I just said that because we're not using an agitator with a pottery wheel this particular washer hangs on supports I'm gonna get rid of those also don't know why I told you about that get rid of the the inner drum gone probably have to cut the outer drum down and make legs for this then find a way to power this wheel attach my own wheel on top of here that will be like the the top of the pottery wheel serum go in this particular washer this motors shot thrown out most of the washer and he's gonna gonna play it by ear we'll see how it works this arrangement is unique to GE washers but they go under a bunch of different names and if you're gonna buy a new washing machine don't buy a GE washing machine I don't think most washers will work for a pottery wheel that's why I picked this one specifically out of our scrap shed but the teardown begin I really hope that was understandable if it wasn't I apologize but it's not my fault I've never made a pottery wheel before so obviously most of this thing is not gonna be useful I'm gonna throw a lot of it well not throw a lot of it but I'm gonna give a lot of it to the scrap metal guy get lost ground it's almost freeing to just be able to rip things apart and not have to save them you know generally I work my job is to fix them so if you just tear them all apart pretty hard to get it back together again goodbye water level sensor tube that will remove some weight I told a friend of mine the guy who gave me those railroad spikes he wants to make this into a chicken plucker and any question well this whole unit can go bye-bye and I'm gonna say these though these have Springs inside Springs can be useful and then I sometimes use these for forgings sometimes many have done it a couple times so next plan remove big concrete weight remove fried motor do you see this this spins spins the thing underneath so it's like the wheel part is built-in I just have to put it on a stand power this wheel and put a platform on the other side what could possible I go wrong do they make this hard too take off you have to take the whole frame off the tub oh never mind I was just being stupid and yes concrete wait most washers these days has some kind of weights in them that's where that cast iron thing was that I melted into an ingot that was a washer weight out from a whirlpool top loader that whirlpool by the way probably not make a good pottery wheel goodbye concrete brick I'm gonna cut this off this is an overflow I'll probably want to chop this down let's start with like halfway wonder if this will work oh yeah there looks a lot more like a pottery wheel now doesn't it and if I spin the pulley yeah look at that okay now the question is do I attach to this do I attach up here this and this and this is there's lots of options I've spoiled for choice on how to attach to this thing I decided to break out one of my other toys and play with it a little bit huh da da cuz what's what good is having a 3d printer if you're not going to actually use it for something useful now and then this this is just something I designed to see this little hex thing it goes over this nut fairly tight this shaft the whole thing goes over the chef's fairly tight and I got three screw points that printed a little smaller than I would have liked but that's fine if this doesn't work I can I can revise the model and reprint again so I'm going to shove it on there yeah okay let me see I think I need a hammer yeah I'll just drop it here no need to swing maybe I should have shaved that off oh but there's there's no slop in this see if I spin the wheel see if that wobbles at all and I can't spin it smoothly so I don't know okay so that's sort of on its way to being taken care of I thought of one different ways to power this and I settled on the one that will be the most ridiculous looking because that's more fun I'll show ya [Applause] tada a razor scooter I got this from a friend of mine it does not work it had a blown speed control board I threw that all out and wired in my own top-quality wiring to a switch making it permanently on or off and the switch falls off for like no reason so this is twice as dangerous as he used to be which was a lot very dangerous so it took me a while to figure out how to make this thing like work on a washing machine they took it apart took all the junk out of it including the rigged up wiring with the crappy blue electrical tape that I did to make scooter work by the way I never fell off the scooter but I also only wrote it about 50 feet part of that is because I'm a grown man and riding a kids scooter is kind of weird but also because I'm too cowardly to ride this thing it is like crazy dangerous but you can't hear me saying because the microphone stopped working this is a DC motor and it's it's kind of easy to handle speed control on DC motors such as voltage now more voltage is more power less voltage less power it's not so easy on like an AC motor but I don't have an AC powered scooter of course I don't have a way to throttle the the voltage other than like connecting and disconnecting more batteries so yeah put a pin in that for the future but I had to do to make this fit on the shaft was a little bit complicated there aren't enough threads so I had to grind them grind the bolts thinner that's probably not a great idea but it it worked so how bad of an idea can it be then I had to chop up the scooter itself I also had to figure out a way to attach the motor bracket to the washer I ended up just attaching like brackets to the bracket if that makes sense double bracketing you can see here I'm testing some brackets that I made with clans and then after I found out that kind of work sort of well I just welded it together fun fact you see those those earmuffs on my ears yeah during this project I got no weld spatter down my ear canal so I I appreciated that very much oh boy that was a lot more work than I anticipated so you saw me just welding these two brackets to this what remains of the frame of the razor scooter with this little bracket that mounts on there you saw me fighting with this what I ended up having to do is go to the hardware store get another nut in a washer this was the original bottom nut from this washing machine and it kind of this this thing here matched up pretty well with this this disc so when I tightened it with the washer tightened it all down and it kind of self centered it so that's that was handy that was really nifty otherwise I was gonna have to figure out a way Center this which there's no way I could have done right and then welded it together or something and at least this way it's all removable and I can take it back to however else should in the future I decide this Chinese scooter motor is not up to the task which I'm starting to think it won't be up to the task but I soldiered out anyway another thing you probably didn't see me do is take this little piece of steel here cut them holes in it and stick these bolt through this is interesting to point out chaos those threads are really long and I'm getting impatient the chain go oh here it is okay so I didn't save the the chain tensioner from the scooter either so I'm gonna tighten the chain by moving this bracket back and forth and tightening it down with this these nuts and bolts they're just nuts and bolts from the hardware store they're nothing special just you know lots of staring Eddin going mm-hmm I'm gonna put this all together and we're gonna test it make sure it works before we go to second legs on this beast moment of truth okay now that we got like a drive system that sort of works I want to talk about a stand which brings us to the woodworking portion of this washing machine razor scooter pottery wheel I want to make kind of like this platform this is just some off cuts of scrap wood I have piled and corner got more of them piled over there and I think if I if I screw them the other like this and attach them then I can sort of stack on the corners things to figure out the height now I'm not gonna make anything permanent I want to make a permanent stand out of steel but steel being is expensive as it is these days I'm not willing to experiment with it I'm gonna experiment nice free wood and this will also allow me to kind of zero in on the height that I want I don't I've never really used a pottery wheel I've used one for 20 minutes in a class wasn't even a pottery class it was a it was a screwing around day and an archeological ceramic analysis class you know just try to try to do potteries you might learn something that's what that's what it was so I really don't know the proper height of one of these the proper way to sit how to use them even kind of weird building one don't even know anything about them but this this will this will allow me to adjust it easily and kind of zero in especially once I figure out like the chair situation and all of that so look Sakhalin temporary but that's only because it is both of those things don't know if this little electric screwdriver will do it but we'll find out Oh yeah Oh screwing into a knot this might be tricky or knots or extra dense oh no problem a nice temporary attachment method some C clamps you can tell this is extra temporary consider this the beta test not even the version 1.0 of a pottery wheel this is version 0.1 this way I can work out all of the bugs or just release it to the public before it's ready looking on you Bethesda alright is it strong enough sure it seems like it these two clamps these are tough clamps okay and I need something to stack I know casting flasks I don't really want to go this janky but at the moment the hardware stores closed so do what you got to do I'm also too impatient to make something out of wood because I want to play with this thing that is shockingly stable and now for this probably good idea to pre pre drilling though oh that plastic is unhappy that plastic is very unhappy this is PLA plastic by the way not particularly strong but it is what was in the printer when I walked downstairs now here's another issue this is the only piece of half-inch plywood I have and this is not very big so I'm just gonna make it not very big it's not permanent in any way I mean plywood around moisture it's not a good idea so I'm gonna cut this out make a circle out of this and just try it out for a little while and then when the hardware store is open when it's not Christmas Day I will go buy a bigger piece of probably not plywood it's not real great you can get marine-grade plywood that's probably fine but on any of that let's see a piece of paper here and if you get your finger dirty and just rub it you make like a dirt rubbing can even get the holes to come through a little bit there you go whole whole whole template then I can reuse this piece of paper for other templates because I am a tightwad there's not well-centered going to countersink the holes the probably not correct way using a chisel tip knife that is very off-center yes I realize this is not a recommended use of an angle grinder zooming actually don't see me please I can't afford legal fees all right now you'll have to forgive me because I don't know how any of this works but I got some clay I got a bucket of water took my ring off and I'm gonna try got me a handful of clay first throwing attempts I sort of centered it and not really sort of made a vessel not really and fun fact it's not easy turns out I'm using the wrong clay but also I stuck well that was going well no it wasn't it wasn't going well you don't have to lie oh it's all squidgy next try future temp sensor bad except when the pot exploded all right mission accomplished here some of the clay ended up over there okay things I've learned splashguard is good throwing pots I'm bad I gotta fix this wobble and speed control is necessary but hey success you too can turn a washing machine and a razor scooter into a pottery wheel not a great one but if you want a great one by one go and try to make one out of junked you have laying around like I just did and now before the family Christmas gathering I'm gonna have to go clean [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Paul's Garage

Views: 24,707

Rating: 4.8681316 out of 5

Keywords: DIY, pottery wheel, pottery wheel throwing, pottery wheel kit, how to make, do it yourself, pottery throwing, potters wheel, do it yourself world, pauls garage, diy pottery wheel, how to make a pottery wheel, homemade pottery wheel, pottery wheel diy, how to make pottery wheel at home, how to make pottery wheel, making a pottery wheel, pottery wheel making at home, how to make a pottery wheel at home, make a pottery wheel

Id: WDMR72ltMNY

Length: 17min 43sec (1063 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 04 2019