Estrin Wheel

[ronfire]

Found a post on these in another category  and thought I would share some in the equipment category.

 

I love how my Estrin wheel works. Simple, smooth operation and simple to repair if you need to. You do not require a special replacement  motor, almost any good hardware store would have one that would work. You might not find one with a switch on the motor but I think a switch close at hand would be better anyway .

Just purchased a second one for $250 complete with working motor. 

I replaced the rubber drive wheel on my first one as it had gone hard and cracked. Went out and purchased a $1.50 hockey puck, went for the softer one. Found the centre and drilled in a hole. Then mounted the puck and then ran the motor and used a coarse rasp and sander to reduce the size and true it up to perfect round.  Works great now, 

I do agree that the drive wheel could do with a shield, might add one to it with a piece of sheet metal and a welder.

 

The other thing I did to it was to put in 3 allen bolts in the wheel and made a bunch of bats out of MDF board to fit the pin alignment. The hard part was to get all 3 pins perfectly spaced around centre ( should have gone with 2 pins). The groves in the plater worked well for a guide, problem came when I went to do the same to the 2nd wheel  the groves where not the same as the first one. Just a hint to those who want to do the same thing, don't put your pins in the area that has the rib on the bottom side of the platter like I did, that gave me some problems.