Ejumacate Me on Pulleys, Please?!

Hello All;

One of the things I need for my Logan restoration is a proper motor pulley. I have not seen any come up for sale, and the ones that Logan offers new are pretty spendy. My instinct is always to look for a home grown solution, and I've done some looking, but it is rather confusing and I'm not getting anywhere.

It seems to me that there "should" be some sort of a modular system where the correct hub ID is mated to the correct pulley ODs to form the right part for the job. The motor shaft in question is 5/8 keyed and the double pulley ODs are approximately 2.31" & 4.28" in diameter. I'll take a wild guess and say these are weird sizes that I won't be able to find anywhere. I'd love to be able to make one, and with any skill at all it should not be that hard, but I don't have any broaching equipment for one thing, nor much skill to get even that far. i'm not a buyer-to-solve-problems, but it looks like that is my option.

Any wisdom you learned gents could provide would be appreciated.

Pulleys are pretty easy to make. If you decide to make your own, I'll broach the keyway for free. Just don't use O-1 or something funky :-).

Regards.

Mike

Not being funny but does " Ejumacate " me mean what I think it means ? I take it you've got one of those new I phone, I pads that spells things wrong on your behalf. Regards Tyrone.

Remember the old test, if you can file a 1x1x1 cube of steel to .001 all around it's surface with just a file.
If you can do that, you can cut a keyway with the edge of a file.
All kidding aside, if you have a mill, come in with a 1/4" endmill and cut a keyway that way. It will have a rounded crest but it should be okay.
Good luck!

Surplus Center (Surplus Center) has motor pulleys. Check 'em out.

For just a few key ways you can grind a tool bit to be a broaching bit and broach a key way with headstock still and moving the carriage with the apron hand wheel . The tool bit acts like a shaper tool going straight in and out of the bore. Tool bit is made the size of the wanted key, with a square end having a little top rake angle (perhaps 15/25*) from the cutting edge, and small corner breaks perhaps .005/.015, In feed with the cross slide. Part should be supported from pushing into chuck with a parallel or spacer behind.
I said for just a few key ways because it takes a little time to cut keys this way with light in-feeds.
A little elaborate but this YouTube shows what I am talking about.
Cutting an Internal Keyway on a Lathe - YouTube

Buck

+1 ^this

It works very well. I've done it a few times now, even forming a square blind hole (in aluminum that time) by broaching out 4 sides of a drilled hole. The biggest job was cutting away the integral key from a tractor's cast iron wheel hub. You'll obtain a surprising amount of cutting force from cranking the handwheel- the larger the machine the more you'll get- HSS is great for this and be as fussy as you can to make up a nice honed cutting edge.

A "fast & dirty" but quite effective solution, is to use 2 single groove sheaves, placed "back-to-back" on the motor shaft, with a full length, square key, passing through both sheaves.

Single groove sheaves are cheap, and readily available, in a wide variety of sizes.



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Tyrone Shoelaces said:

Not being funny but does " Ejumacate " me mean what I think it means ? I take it you've got one of those new I phone, I pads that spells things wrong on your behalf. Regards Tyrone.

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Har!

For what it's worth, I only have a dumb phone. It does texts... and phone calls even. No camera. I've sworn to replace it when it croaks, but the damn thing won't! Geographic and cultural boundaries at loggerheads here. Funny. "Ejumacate" is a colloquialism or malaprop for educate, used to jokingly infer general ignorance or obtuseness. Think of the British version of what we call rednecks here in the new world.

It should be a topic well understood, sheaves or pulleys having been around since God was in trade school. Conversely, it can sometimes be the well understood and ubiquitous that is most baffling, as the number of choices makes for a mind numbing array to wade through and decipher. To those feeling this is a subject patently simple and not worthy of much thought, please understand that I have studied this a bit, and some of these ideas have occurred to me already. Yet, there is always that slick solution that can evade us all, and that might be forthcoming here. I'm all for slick and unconventional, if it is feasible, and not too expensive.

Drilling a like sized hole in a scrap of sheetmetal and welding it on to your drive screws to remove them. Fargin brilliant. That's what I'm looking for. Or hoping... So far, the back-to-back single sheaves is in the lead, although matching generic pulleys to the odd 2.31" & 4.28" OD has not fallen exact (to the extent that matters. ???). One of the things that HAD already occurred to me. Here's a thought; could you do a down and dirty broach with the fine down feed on a vertical mill?

Ok... I'll stop now. A couple of pints of Bass and most of a bottle of Syrah have taken their toll on brevity...... Carry on, please.

thermite said:

...It's a Logan lathe. Not a surface grinder. Reserve your 'make it' time and skill for something harder to find (or afford..).

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Yup, Browning has 2-groove pulleys that are real close: 2BK25 is 2.50" OD with a PD of 1.9" or 2.3" depending on whether you use a "A" or "B" belt. 2BK45 is 4.25" OD with a PD of 3.5" or 3.9"--both available with 5/8" bores...

Well...

Not over thinking. To me, over thinking means knowing something about what you are thinking about, and THEN doing too much of it. In this case it is ignorance, as I don't know enough about sheaves to over think them! I am learning a bit, however. 3L - 4L seems fine to me for this little lathe, but getting into PD is more than I wanted to know, frankly. A brain can only handle so much, and mine is more limited than most. At some point I just want it done and it's on to more important things.

It's looking like two singles laid back-to-back will be the solution. I'm hoping that there is enough shaft and proper motor positioning for this. In looking at a place called Motion Industries (Google search hit), the catalog pics that come up for these things are generic and the descriptions seem incomplete. They do not mention keyways nor set screws. Is it typical for them to have both if they are bored to size? If they don't have a set screw, how do you fix them in place?

Thanks for your interest, fellows. I appreciate it!

Jeff_G said:

Surplus Center (Surplus Center) has motor pulleys. Check 'em out.

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+1 on this - Actually decent quality , from the ones I've seen - Pretty cheap , and many , many sizes

Tom A said:

+1 on this - Actually decent quality , from the ones I've seen - Pretty cheap , and many , many sizes

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I had not thought of them. I already get their catalogs. Thanks for the tickle!

I've made a lot of Vee belt Pulleys. If I'm making many of one size I grind a form tool for the Vee. One of I use the compound.
Find lots of scrap in the junk yard and ebay as quite a few cut-off ends for sale.
Broaching on the lathe is simple and Aluminum cuts easy! Made a lot of broaches from broken taps. (I save everything that's HSS or carbide) When possible I use 7075 Aluminum. For now stick a single pulley on the machine of about the size that will give you the speed range you want and make your pulley. Making it will Ejumcate you and you can say you lernt sumtin!
Frank

Making a pulley is not hard...
Here is a video showing how to...
Taking small steps can be a confidence builder to take on larger more complex projects...

Frank & Lazz;

The temptation to make one is always strong in my mind. Learning is the point of all this, after all. I should have started YEARS ago with this machine stuff. These machines of my Fathers have been around my entire life, but I had to get old to get interested enough to overcome my ... fear-of-the-unknown, I guess.

The only thing that is really a crap shoot is getting the bore right, which is pretty critical. My running lathe is VERY loose and - along with my severe lack of talent/experience - getting accurate bores is REALLY difficult. It occurs to me that I might be better off drilling/reaming than turning, and that I might be wise to invest in my first reamer instead of playing Russian Roulette with the boring bars I already have. Would reaming be well done on the lathe, or better done on the mill? I suppose, why create another setup hassle and just do it on the lathe while it is already set. How many thou do I need for a final ream size to get proper slip fit clearance?

Making things FOR the machines is great, since I don't have that many excuses to use them otherwise, ability breeding "excuses" notwithstanding. I'm very familiar with Mr Peterson's efforts. I've watched ALL of his shop vids. I just may take a crack at it. I'll have to order stuff either way, so whether it is stock or parts is a flip of the coin. I remember that project of his, and I'm going to back and watch it again.

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And so;

Refreshed on Tubalcain video. I've got a live center, and I just recently bought a nice set of dogs off of... you know. Buy stock. Purchase Item #1. Mr. Pete turns it on an arbor. It would be a hellish parting job to turn it out of a slug mounted in the chuck. Yeh, I see the wisdom of that, but I don't have any arbors. Purchase Item 2. Drill and ream (he reamed to 5/8 exact). Yep, see the wisdom in that, but I don't have any reamers. Purchase Item #3. As is always the case, making any part is only cheap the second time, AFTER you have the tools to do it with. Should I choose to, my first pulley will be an expensive one, but a lot cheaper after that.

I assume you mean tubalcain videos. I don't have many nice things to say about those. Lot of bad or missing information I've seen there. Plus he openly states he don't work from a print. Not good! That simply states he can't make the part as required so what ever he makes is good enough! That's not skill!
A drill will go fairly concentric if drilled on a lathe with a good center drilled hole, and the reamer will tend to follow the drilled hole. But it can wander and your hole not concentric. You would be far better-off if you drilled the hole then bored it to near the size to get it concentric with the pulley grooves. Then used the reamer to get your size if your not able to bore it. Lots of ways to skin that cat, not knowing what tools you have it would be hard to suggest what to do. If you ask questions we can answer and get you to a completed pulley. You have a Print, the old pulley!

Frank

Now...

If I had an old pulley, why would I be needing another? Yes, there is a pulley but it is the wrong OD, and only a single. I can probably take groove dimensions off of it though... if you think Mr. Pete is not reliable in that regard. The thing to keep in mind about those videos is, A) making them is harder than it seems, and knowing what to include or not is pretty difficult, given time constraints, etc. It takes practice, and a SURPRISING amount of time. B) He's not likely to please the "engineer types" very much. He is what I would call a "farmer machinist." I don't consider him meticulous enough to be a toolroom, Hardinge, tenths-of-thous kind of guy. Maybe he was at one time in his shop life, but he now makes stuff that works with a mid-western sensibility of getting the job done as good as it needs to be. I would not accuse him of over thinking a lot of his work. I personally don't care for the way he tosses tools around on the benches and tables, but that is just me. Despite any shortcomings, he does provide a lot of tremendously useful information for people just starting out, and if nothing else, his videos possess a certain humor, for what that's worth.

I assume there is a certain Humor, Bubba machine shop! But machining is precise. Just a few days ago there was someone asking how to set the micrometer stop for internal threading like tubalcain did on his video. Seems tubalcain forgot to mention the lathe he was using was equipped with a half-nut opening device. Do that on another lathe and you will have a serious crash!
So the Pulley you mentioned is the size on the machine. So calculate what spindle speeds you want and that will give you the motor pulley diameters you will need. You might have a speed chart on the lathe so use those speeds. That would be your start point.

Frank

RedlineMan said:

[.....] The motor shaft in question is 5/8 keyed and the double pulley ODs are approximately 2.31" & 4.28" in diameter. [....]

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Perhaps I should have said that these are the original and correct pulley sizes. The motor has only a single on it now; an adjustable width job about 4" OD.