Load Wheels

File this under great hardware finds. - I needed low-profile, high capacity wheels for an effect and stumbled onto these. They are load wheels for a pallet jack (the wheels pictured are Crown part number 44506 / McMaster 2670T58. The yellow caster mounts are shop built.) 44506 Load wheel specs: 2500 lbs load rating! 3” diameter x 3 7/8” wide Roller ball bearings Shore 90A polyurethane tread Slightly oversized 3/4” shaft (about 25/32”) $30 each from Mcmaster $45 each from a Crown distributor (price will undoubtably vary) What makes these attractive?...
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Roll Bender Wheels

Danger Will Robinson! The cast iron wheels pictured below are the ones that were spec’ed in Keith Cornelius’s 1997 Tech Expo article_An Inexpensive, Human-Powered Roll-Former_. (Grainer part numbers are #3G262 and #3G263.) Obviously they’ve changed a little bit since 1997; the new “feature” is a crown to the surface of the wheel. Unless you’re looking to mangle your steel whilst bending, I suggest you find flatter wheels. I suggest finding flatter iron wheels through Mcmaster-Carr....
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Additional Porta-band Thoughts

Quick thought on the porta-band stand described in an earlier post, mounting the saw to the vice-mount takes a couple of minutes. You could make a smaller custom foot that always stays on the saw and “dovetails” into the vice mount. A single machine screw could be used to secure the small foot to the mount. This way the saw could go from case to vice (and back again) in under 30 seconds....
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Porta-band Stand on the Cheap

Ian made this custom foot for the Porta-band that clamps into the vice this past week. Its 3/8” cold roll plate with a bit of scrap 1x box tube welded to the underside. A spring clamp on the trigger acts as a low tech on/off switch. ....
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Paste & Punch Templates

While in grad school I became a fan of what I like to call Past & Punch Templates. When you need to fabricate a part that is particularly funky or needs to be exceedingly precise, you print a full sized drawing from CAD and past it onto the material that needs to be machined. Fairly simple right? For years I’ve used spray 77 to adhere the template to the part, but then you have to deal with removing the adhesive from the part when it is going to be painted or moves against another part....
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Dirt on Stage

Dirt on stage. Poo poo. Dusty, dirty, a real pain in the ass. Jen tells me that she’s got a way to tame the dust. The secret is glycerol (aka glycerine or glycerin). Don’t worry, glycerol may sound threatening, but rest assured, it is not. It is a sugar alcohol that is found in everything from food to pharmaceuticals. Obligatory wiki link to glycerol. You can buy glycerol in 5 gallon buckets, which should last most folks for an entire run....
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