开云体育

Hi all, I'm currently in the process of making, or more correctly attempting to make, a bandsaw power feeder. It is a bit of an experiment and I'm quite prepared for it not to work, it's mainly been put together with bits and pieces I either had lying around or could acquire cheaply.

I managed to buy a pallet of five brand-new table saw power feeder support arms cheaply at a machinery auction. I figured that these could be adapted to the bandsaw.

I've modified the head where the normal power feader would attach so that I can attach a worm drive gearbox, from here I have two pallet jack wheels mounted as the drive rollers.

The power feeder support arms are very well made, the shafts are all precision ground and the cast-iron components are also accurately machined. I found that by loosening the lower mount slightly the vertical and horizontal alarms rotate smoothly with little friction and no perceptible slop.

I currently don't have any spring? system to apply pressure to the drive wheels to push against the workplece. I have the system to the point where I can power it up and manually push the horizontal arm. I have it running very slowly and it pushes timber okay . I tested the force generated by putting various weights in front of the timber and it seems that it will slip prematurely. That is I don't think it's generating enough force to push a sizable workpiece past the blade . The system has heaps of torque so that's not the problem.

I'm guessing this is an issue generally with bandsaw feeders as various models have serrated metal wheels and sometimes wheels similar to mine but with self stick sandpaper applied.

At this stage I would like to know how much force the spring loaded mechanism applies to the drive rollers in a commercial power feeder? I'm not after an exact force just some feel for whether it's modest high or very high.

I used a digital luggage scale to do some testing and I think my manual, "pushing with my arm", arrangement is generating somewhere around 25 to 30 kg.

So I'm trying to decide what to do next, either apply some self stick sandpaper to the wheels, or build a spring mechanism which produces higher force. I'm guessing that my 25 to 30 kg should be more than enough and that the slickness of the drive wheels is the issue.

Thanks in advance

Murray