Hello all. I am getting some serious wild tracking on my grinder. Haven’t touched it since last November, so hasn’t been nudged or knocked. This is also a little too much for just belt play, though I am sure that’s not helping. This is mostly effecting plunges of course... if you guys were looking at the over hang of the belt you’d see the belt swing wildly on and off the edge, doesn’t make for straight plunges lol and they don’t need to be anymore challenging as it is haha! Any tips on how to bring everything back into alignment. Like I am asking if the gap between the grinder body and the tracking wheel needs to be matched in the drive wheel and tool arm attachments? I was going to perfectly square the tracking wheel, mark centre and then adjust everything else to that centre. But I may be over thinking it. The other thing I am dealing with is the dual axis adjustment of my tracking, so it’s no doubt out because of micro adjustments here. Anyway, thanks for any input
Grinder pictures would help. That is what happens when you take 6 months off and drink to much beer everything goes to Hell. I was just taking to a buddy of mine in Calgary and he said that he had a batch of new belts that were not put together properly and there was no way you could not get them to track properly. A belt left on a grinder for a long time with no use will also move all over the place.
Haha! I am working on it now. If after I set it up to what I feel is square, and it’s still doing it I will post a video.
Can you get it tracking properly without the tracking wheel? Just the platen and the motor. Might help to troubleshoot. Are all the pullies still moving freely? Does the belt sway on its own or just when pressure is applied? Can't think of why it would go wonky after sitting unless a bearing is ceasing up causing the belt to bunch up.
Fixed...touch wood...touching all the freaking wood haha Man it took some adjusting! I had to pull my drive wheel off, and increase the gap from the machine. Unbeknownst to me the belts had been cutting into one of my motor bolts! I took my tracking wheel off. Squared the mechanism to the arm. Used my digital level to zero the pivot the tracking wheel attached to so I knew that was level and in line with the body of the machine. Put my wheel back on, found centre, matched centre on the drive wheel and my idler wheels on my platen and I seem to be okay. I used several belts from several different manufacturers VSM, 3M, Norton, Klingspor, and Phoenix ...and each one had to be adjusted...not via the tracking...but via the shock arm tension. In my research I came across a recommendation on the the Red Label abrasives site. They said if every thing is square then most tracking issues lay with the amount of tension used on the belts. So on my machine, 3M and Norton belts liked the most tension with the shock fully compressed. And the rest seems to track better with about 75% compression. Out of all I found my 3M gator belts and Trizact belts ran best with practically zero belt bump. I had video, but it’s boring lol. I didn’t get footage of the wild swing, which obviously the reason the belt snaked so much was it hitting the bolt! I do have 20 seconds of half way through the readjustment, and 20 seconds of the fix, if anyone is interested...but if you like that I can film some paint drying also lol.
