The weekend putter report

No, this is not deja vu, its just that I couldn’t think of a better title and it still fits anyway. :)

The weekend got started pretty well on Friday. Our family went out garage sale hopping.  There were a lot of them because it was advertised as a city wide garage sale. Normally, I’m just happy to find a few small items that will assist me in whatever I’m up to. But I hit the mother lode of tools at this one sale. I’ll tell ya, if I had the budget and actually needed everything the guy had I would have been sorely tempted to just buy him out. As it was, I limited myself to two items, one of which I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to use.  The first item was a bench-top grinder with a wire wheel on one end and grindstone on the other.  I’ll probably be putting this to use almost immediately due to the nature of my recent projects. The other item was a full molding head set for my table saw. Here is what a similar item goes for retail.  I honestly don’t know when I might get to use it, but when you can pick up both of those items for a total of $60, you just have to take a leap of faith and invest in the future.:)

Fast forward to Sunday morning in the shop. My first order of business is to measure my centrifuge rig to purchase a drive belt. It was a bit difficult since I was not sure how tight I should make it. But I settled on a loose fit since I could install a tensioner pulley if need be. I had some time to kill before the store opened, so I decided to track down a reason for why one of my electrical circuits in the shop had stopped working a couple of weeks ago. The breaker did not appear tripped or damaged, so it was a bit of a mystery. I tried everything I knew to pin the source down. I was about to give up when I looked to one side of the breaker box. There was a GFCI outlet there. And it was tripped. I knew the outlet was there, I guess I just didn’t realize it was on that circuit. It was one of the few that were there before I put the workshop in so I didn’t give it much thought. The whole thing made me think back to my jr. high science teacher. I will never forget him always saying “A good scientist is a keen observer. Look around, look around look around.” Good advice no matter what field you are in if you ask me.

The rest of the day was spent working on the centrifuge drive.  Here is a picture of the result so I can discuss what I did.

The motor is resting on a furnace fan blower housing. This is the third motor I tried. My first attempt used the motor that actually came with the housing. But it proved to be too weak and slow. My second attempt was the motor off an old water pump. I had to do some serious modifications to that motor’s housing in order to get it to fit in the first motor’s cradle. Firing it up, I found it went fast enough, but it had overheating issues that kept shutting it off. The motor in the picture is 1/2 hp  and turns at just over 1700rpm. On the shaft is a 4” diameter pulley. The shaft under the centrifuge has a 2” diameter pulley. This doubles the RPM at the centrifuge to over 3400rpm. I can actually thank my Friday bench grinder purchase for allowing me to use this motor because it had been my stationary wire wheel. Right now, the motor is not attached to anything, merely sitting on the sheet metal. I’m using the 4x4 next to it to vary the tension on the drive belt, but this will eventually be replaced by some sort of pulley system. I need to vary the tension because I have found that the motor will not rev to speed if the belt is tight.

So, we’ve discussed the drive train. But what is it driving?  Well, this:

We are looking through the hole in the tub where the spray arm came up through the bottom.  The centrifuge vessel is an old aluminum pot. (Of course it’s old, when’s the last time you saw a harvest gold piece of cookware?) I have added a 2” lip made of aluminum sheet metal. I had wanted to solder it on but was not having any luck at that so I went with adhesive caulk.  My next challenge on this project will be getting this thing properly balanced. I knew going in that I was never going to get these materials together and achieve perfect balance right off the bat. It is going to take adding a little weight in some places, shaving some off in another. I just needed a way to get it spinning fast to see if my balancing efforts are working or not.

Well, I’m putting myself to sleep reading this, can’t imagine how it’s affecting you all.:) Goodnight.