I designed a set of aluminum grinder wheels and handed them off to a machinist buddy who owns a professional shop. The only problem is that his pricing starts at 20 sets which is more than I need. Do you guys think there is enough interest out there for me to take a risk with buying 20 sets? 1-2" crowned wheel 2-2" flat wheels 1-4" crowned drive wheel with 5/8" arbor hole and 1/4x20 set screw
There may be some interest in the Canadian market as it can be costly to get these sets in from US. A few on this forum have asked before and I believe they went and brought them in from US. As a cost comparison, Oregon Blade Maker sells a similar aluminum set consisting of: 2 x 2"x 2.25" flats + bearings 1 x 3" x 2.25" crowned tracking wheel + bearings 1 x 4" x 2.25" drive wheel bored for a 5/8" keyed shaft, setscrew etc. for US$107 US + US$27 shipping. That's US$134 at a rough exchange rate is going to be around CA$185 to your door, maybe with some GST in there. Is that a fair comparison to having them machined? I get asked about wheels quite a bit via my blog. If you do go ahead, let me know what you have and I will put your name out there. Merry Christmas, Dan
Thanks for this Dan, incredibly helpful. In the end the cost to the buyer would be the same and I would have to do it out of the residual cheer of the Christmas season. I'm afraid I can't take the risk and have nothing to show for it at the end. I always try to source locally and Canadian but this doesn't seem to work in this case. I think I will probably order from this guy. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good knife! Martin
Often its cheaper to buy something than it is to have it made. The only thing i would add is that i would personally want a larger tracking wheel. The tracking wheel needs to be wider than the belts due to the fact that it is what forces the belt left or right. This means the belt is often not centered on the tracker. Lastly, i think 2 inches is too small for a tracking wheel, and a 3 inch or larger would last longer. Larger wheel, means fewer rpm, means a lot more bearing life and less heat.
might as well dump these links here as well, a wide assortment of wheels including a tracking wheel assembly that would be nice for a homebuilt unit. These companies have some interesting types of 8-12" serrated, non-serrated and partially serrated contact wheels in hard and soft compounds and it is a mass produced item for them not a small run so the prices can be lower. https://www.sunray-inc.com/online-store/ http://www.contactrubber.com/contact-wheels.asp http://conarubber.com/backStandIdlerMachines.htm https://onlinesupply.ca/belts/narrow-belts-under-8-wide?page=15 http://www.divinebrothers.com/index.php
