Wobblycogs Workshop

  • One of the most worrying aspects of this machine build is that it’s been essentially impossible to tell if it will work until it’s all but complete. The only major piece of functionality that I didn’t absolutely have to fit…

  • Fitting the motor posed some interesting problems since I had completely neglected to design in any way of getting to the feet to insert bolts. Fitting a carriage to the motor which could be more easily attached was clearly out…

  • With the pulley mounted to the driven shaft I moved onto the motor. The first thing to do was to fit the pulley to the shaft. The taper bush required a little encouragement to get it started on the shaft…

  • Now that the idler stock is complete I moved onto the drive shaft. I learnt a lot of lessons about make the roller from making the one for the idler stock and I managed to ignore most of them. The…

  • Ironically the rollers, which I thought would be quite simple, turned out to be fairly difficult to get right. The problem I faced was similar to the problem I faced with the tensioning system – the bar or perhaps my…

  • Of all the parts of this project the one that probably caused me the most trouble was the tensioning and tracking system. It’s not strictly necessary for the two features to be built as one piece, you could tension the…

  • The idler carriage was the first part of the belt sander that I actually put together because it involved solving almost all of the main problems with the machine in one compact piece. The main problem I felt I was…

  • Now that the parts are all cut out it’s time to get started on building the case. I actually started making the idler carriage first but I’m presenting the case construction first as that seems more logical.

  • I’ve now cut all the pieces for my home made belt sander out of MR-MDF. I hate working with MDF, It seems no matter how much extraction I’ve got going the dust still seems to go everywhere. A problem not…

  • At last I think I have a design that can build and that is also built out of components that exist in this universe! By spinning the motor round and having the disc sander powered off the idler shaft I…

  • Right so I’m now onto design number three and the wheels have come off a bit. Thinking I had the design pretty much sorted I rushed out and spent a load of money on parts. What I should really have…

  • One of the things I really wanted to try and avoid was using springs in the tensioning design. My plan was to keep the design as simple as possible and use as few components as possible but after much thought…

  • Over the years I think I’ve probably thought about building just about everything imaginable. Rather than forget these whimsical musings I thought I’d put together a list of things that I’ll try and build one day.

  • I initially started designing my belt sander around some cheap and cheerful belts I picked up from B&Q that were in a discount bin. As per my requirement for easy belt changing I have stuck the main belt wheels out the side…

  • The design (I currently have) for the belt sander requires the use of springs to provide tension on the belt through action on the idler wheel. I’m fairly happy with the design now but I know very little about springs…