My belt sander is a very solid cast iron piece made by Crafstman in the 60's. The only complaint I have is the lack of power. The 1/2 HP motor can be stalled quite easily. Since I had the 1.5HP single phase motor left over from my drill press conversion I decided to install it on the belt sander.
Pretty simple really as the motor just bolts under the stand on a mounting plate with horizontal slots to allow for lots of motor possibilities. I need to add the ability to adjust vertically so I sliced a 8" long piece of 1.5" square tubing in half lengthwise and milled some slotted holes.
I bought a 4" OD aluminum pulley at PA. It had a 3/4" bore so I had to bore it slightly to match the 20mm shaft and widen the keyway slightly to fit the 5mm key. After I got it all installed and wired up I hit the switch and tried to sand a piece of steel and got a surprise. The motor turns the wrong direction! It turns CW and I need CCW rotation. I was pretty choked at myself for not thinking of that before I started. The motor has no provision for reversing the direction. I found a very good video on youtube and followed the instructions from it. Basically you need to reverse the polarity of the start windings only. I took the motor apart and found the start winding leads buried under a bunch of insulating sleeves and held in place by string. It was pretty easy to cut the 2 leads at their original solder joints and reverse and re-solder them. I used sail makers thread to replace the string ties holding it all together. I was quite surprised when it actually worked. I figured for sure I would be back to the old motor. Link to the video.
Any way the motor swap was a success and the sander has tons of power now.
Pretty simple really as the motor just bolts under the stand on a mounting plate with horizontal slots to allow for lots of motor possibilities. I need to add the ability to adjust vertically so I sliced a 8" long piece of 1.5" square tubing in half lengthwise and milled some slotted holes.
I bought a 4" OD aluminum pulley at PA. It had a 3/4" bore so I had to bore it slightly to match the 20mm shaft and widen the keyway slightly to fit the 5mm key. After I got it all installed and wired up I hit the switch and tried to sand a piece of steel and got a surprise. The motor turns the wrong direction! It turns CW and I need CCW rotation. I was pretty choked at myself for not thinking of that before I started. The motor has no provision for reversing the direction. I found a very good video on youtube and followed the instructions from it. Basically you need to reverse the polarity of the start windings only. I took the motor apart and found the start winding leads buried under a bunch of insulating sleeves and held in place by string. It was pretty easy to cut the 2 leads at their original solder joints and reverse and re-solder them. I used sail makers thread to replace the string ties holding it all together. I was quite surprised when it actually worked. I figured for sure I would be back to the old motor. Link to the video.
Any way the motor swap was a success and the sander has tons of power now.
