Hello friends
I read that I’m supposed to do a little introduction so here it goes
I’m Andrew, AKA FuzzNut. I work at a coal power station in WV. I work in operations and went to school for power plant operations at YSU. I don’t do very much major mechanical work here, just very minor maintenance. They don’t allow ops to do much.. like barely even changing belts lol. This being said I’ve always worked on vehicles w my dad, rebuilt dirtbike motors etc. I’’m also very into firearms, and was very happy to see a gunsmithign thread
. I’ve reloaded for 5 yrs and done a fair bit of precision shooting. Also have some quiet pew pew devices.
A few of the certified welders, some ex boilermakers of 15+ years taught me to weld here at work “under the radar”. I’ve done tapping and stuff in the past but most other machining is 100% new to me. Lots of guys here that are great machinists in the maint department have been teaching me some stuff but my thirst for knowledge led me here.
I’m originally from Ohio. My pap was a pipe fitter, but other then that no one on either side of my family works metal. My dad has a really nice welder he got in 1985, but barely uses it and boogers things up. So almost all of my metalworking has been self taught, under some verbal direction. A few weeks ago I picked up a smithy 1220xl for a very good deal. I know it’s not the best because it’s a 3in1 and all that, but I had no lathe, no mill or drill press. All of my big jobs I had to do at work which is usually frowned upon on company time lol. Now I have at least a basic tool to make stuff.
When I first came to the power plant I was 20, so they said “you barely have fuzz on your nuts!” .. so you see how that went lol. Kinda funny over the intercom anyways.
Anyways enough about me; about the conveyor belt
So we are building a cabin at my camp on the Ohio river. It’s boat access only. We have to load the lumber from shore to boats, then from the boat to the top of the camp at the location of the cabin. The hillside we are going up is 20 steps, roughly 16-18ft elevation change. The cabin is going to be 24x16 2 story built on pillars a few ft off the ground.
In 2x4s alone we need about 250 lol. 45 2x10 floor joists, 40 50lb bags of sacrete, and much more. a lot of lumber for 4 guys to carry. My dad(60) and 2 brothers (27,34). I’m 27 as well, I have a twin lol.
So my solution is to build a conveyor belt. I want to build as much of it as possible form scrap metal and home machined parts. I have only bought a few drive belts and 12 1/2in bearings so far. I’ve seen some firewood conveyors and hay conveyors but most are not the scale I would need. I thought of other stuff like a shuttle or a winch to pull **** up but that’s too slow and not complicated enough. I’ve made all the beginner stuff on the lathe like a brass hammer, a little canister I played with making inside and outside threads, a metal scribe holder and some other little things. The first project I made to dimensions was wheels for a friends “annealeez” brass annealing machine. The plastic ones melted so I made some out of stainless for him. Cut my finger clearing some swarf, machine off of course. Right through leather work gloves.
That being said working for the power company as some of you may know, they have their entire own section in the osha regulations. It’s very strict and I work around TONS of rotating equipment. I have a more then healthy respect for spinny thingies and I say TF back. No games there. I counted the other day, in rotating screw conveyors alone I work around 55 of them. I work around 6 high speed material handling conveyors.
I’m rambling .. back to the belt. So I cut 5 pulley sets for 3L belts , 3/8 size V belt, at 34 degrees. As far as I could understand that was the correct-ish angle lol. I made 4 reductions of 3-1 and the main drive is going to be 200-1. Going to power it with a 9hp horizontal shaft pressure washer Briggs motor. As far as I could tell the output is 3000rpm. The head pulley is 13 inch which per rotation pulls 40.8in of belt. The head pulley at 200-1 is 15 rpm. This equates to about 50FPM belt speed. That is if the dimensions of my pulleys are correct. I’m a little worried about grip on the pulleys since I made them 1 inch to 3 inch pulleys, but that’s the metal I had available. Most of the metal I have is scrap from work, so that determines my dimensions lol. The pulley reduction system I set up needs changed a little because I don’t like how each belt is tensioned. I tested it just with a screw gun and everything seems to grip and turn ok. I cut the keyway slot with an end mill on both the pulleys and the shaft, so the pulleys have a rounded hole lol.
The head pulley is 2 13 inch wheels with the inside lip cut off. Spaced apart 20 inches is the plan, I’m cutting the belt to 20 inches wide. The belt is old coal feeder belt, 3/8 thick. I made hub attachments and welded them in, have a 1 1/8 shaft to drive the head pulley and 2 high speed bearings for it. The belt length is going to be 64ft, 32 ft loop. Will take about 40 seconds per rotation, might be too slow.
I plan on using something similar to an old lawnmower blade engagement lever to tension the final drive belt. At work we have a tensioner on a small inspection drive motor for a 250ft steep angle bucket conveyor, maybe 30hp motor, that’s manually activated like that. Of course it’s massive with like a 8 ft lever sweep but that’s how it works. I turned down a little idler pulley and made a 4ft lever already for all that. This way I can start the motor then ease the tension on to the drive pulley and slowly start the belt.
I don’t have much plan for a tail pulley or a way to tighten the whole belt up yet. At work 2 of our belts use massive counterweights that pull back on a tail pulley that rides on a sled track, to maintain tension under different loads and belt deflections. The other ones use just all thread jack bolts to pull the tail pulley away from the head to tension. I’ll probably drive pipe or something in the ground at the tail to have something to pull against.
I want to build a brake system. Conveyors at work have a rollback clutch that engages to prevent a loaded belt from rolling back. I don’t care that much if it rolls back, but it may blow apart my pulley drive system or something if it does. I thought of a few brake systems such as taking a mechanical lever on an old car rotor, making a ratcheting one way system like a come-along, or even using an old boat winch I have (probably wouldn’t hold up).
My main questions are :
Has anyone ever built a conveyor of this size, or any at all
What is your best idea on a brake system to stop and hold the head pulley of the belt.
Any ideas on tensioning the whole belt conveyor, or a way to make a tail pulley
Best way for uploading pictures on this forum?
I also need to think of a way to make center supports. I figure 3 or 4 would be fine, thought about just using 2 pieces of pipe, one maybe 2 inch over a 1.5inch piece that will spin freely and just rest it under the belt. Put a few attachment points to the sides and drive pipe in the ground. That would get me by for as long as it needs to run.
Sorry if this post was long, Working a double shift and things are slow lol. I’ll add pictures from my laptop when I get home
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I read that I’m supposed to do a little introduction so here it goes
I’m Andrew, AKA FuzzNut. I work at a coal power station in WV. I work in operations and went to school for power plant operations at YSU. I don’t do very much major mechanical work here, just very minor maintenance. They don’t allow ops to do much.. like barely even changing belts lol. This being said I’ve always worked on vehicles w my dad, rebuilt dirtbike motors etc. I’’m also very into firearms, and was very happy to see a gunsmithign thread
. I’ve reloaded for 5 yrs and done a fair bit of precision shooting. Also have some quiet pew pew devices. A few of the certified welders, some ex boilermakers of 15+ years taught me to weld here at work “under the radar”. I’ve done tapping and stuff in the past but most other machining is 100% new to me. Lots of guys here that are great machinists in the maint department have been teaching me some stuff but my thirst for knowledge led me here.
I’m originally from Ohio. My pap was a pipe fitter, but other then that no one on either side of my family works metal. My dad has a really nice welder he got in 1985, but barely uses it and boogers things up. So almost all of my metalworking has been self taught, under some verbal direction. A few weeks ago I picked up a smithy 1220xl for a very good deal. I know it’s not the best because it’s a 3in1 and all that, but I had no lathe, no mill or drill press. All of my big jobs I had to do at work which is usually frowned upon on company time lol. Now I have at least a basic tool to make stuff.
When I first came to the power plant I was 20, so they said “you barely have fuzz on your nuts!” .. so you see how that went lol. Kinda funny over the intercom anyways.
Anyways enough about me; about the conveyor belt
So we are building a cabin at my camp on the Ohio river. It’s boat access only. We have to load the lumber from shore to boats, then from the boat to the top of the camp at the location of the cabin. The hillside we are going up is 20 steps, roughly 16-18ft elevation change. The cabin is going to be 24x16 2 story built on pillars a few ft off the ground.
In 2x4s alone we need about 250 lol. 45 2x10 floor joists, 40 50lb bags of sacrete, and much more. a lot of lumber for 4 guys to carry. My dad(60) and 2 brothers (27,34). I’m 27 as well, I have a twin lol.
So my solution is to build a conveyor belt. I want to build as much of it as possible form scrap metal and home machined parts. I have only bought a few drive belts and 12 1/2in bearings so far. I’ve seen some firewood conveyors and hay conveyors but most are not the scale I would need. I thought of other stuff like a shuttle or a winch to pull **** up but that’s too slow and not complicated enough. I’ve made all the beginner stuff on the lathe like a brass hammer, a little canister I played with making inside and outside threads, a metal scribe holder and some other little things. The first project I made to dimensions was wheels for a friends “annealeez” brass annealing machine. The plastic ones melted so I made some out of stainless for him. Cut my finger clearing some swarf, machine off of course. Right through leather work gloves.
That being said working for the power company as some of you may know, they have their entire own section in the osha regulations. It’s very strict and I work around TONS of rotating equipment. I have a more then healthy respect for spinny thingies and I say TF back. No games there. I counted the other day, in rotating screw conveyors alone I work around 55 of them. I work around 6 high speed material handling conveyors.
I’m rambling .. back to the belt. So I cut 5 pulley sets for 3L belts , 3/8 size V belt, at 34 degrees. As far as I could understand that was the correct-ish angle lol. I made 4 reductions of 3-1 and the main drive is going to be 200-1. Going to power it with a 9hp horizontal shaft pressure washer Briggs motor. As far as I could tell the output is 3000rpm. The head pulley is 13 inch which per rotation pulls 40.8in of belt. The head pulley at 200-1 is 15 rpm. This equates to about 50FPM belt speed. That is if the dimensions of my pulleys are correct. I’m a little worried about grip on the pulleys since I made them 1 inch to 3 inch pulleys, but that’s the metal I had available. Most of the metal I have is scrap from work, so that determines my dimensions lol. The pulley reduction system I set up needs changed a little because I don’t like how each belt is tensioned. I tested it just with a screw gun and everything seems to grip and turn ok. I cut the keyway slot with an end mill on both the pulleys and the shaft, so the pulleys have a rounded hole lol.
The head pulley is 2 13 inch wheels with the inside lip cut off. Spaced apart 20 inches is the plan, I’m cutting the belt to 20 inches wide. The belt is old coal feeder belt, 3/8 thick. I made hub attachments and welded them in, have a 1 1/8 shaft to drive the head pulley and 2 high speed bearings for it. The belt length is going to be 64ft, 32 ft loop. Will take about 40 seconds per rotation, might be too slow.
I plan on using something similar to an old lawnmower blade engagement lever to tension the final drive belt. At work we have a tensioner on a small inspection drive motor for a 250ft steep angle bucket conveyor, maybe 30hp motor, that’s manually activated like that. Of course it’s massive with like a 8 ft lever sweep but that’s how it works. I turned down a little idler pulley and made a 4ft lever already for all that. This way I can start the motor then ease the tension on to the drive pulley and slowly start the belt.
I don’t have much plan for a tail pulley or a way to tighten the whole belt up yet. At work 2 of our belts use massive counterweights that pull back on a tail pulley that rides on a sled track, to maintain tension under different loads and belt deflections. The other ones use just all thread jack bolts to pull the tail pulley away from the head to tension. I’ll probably drive pipe or something in the ground at the tail to have something to pull against.
I want to build a brake system. Conveyors at work have a rollback clutch that engages to prevent a loaded belt from rolling back. I don’t care that much if it rolls back, but it may blow apart my pulley drive system or something if it does. I thought of a few brake systems such as taking a mechanical lever on an old car rotor, making a ratcheting one way system like a come-along, or even using an old boat winch I have (probably wouldn’t hold up).
My main questions are :
Has anyone ever built a conveyor of this size, or any at all
What is your best idea on a brake system to stop and hold the head pulley of the belt.
Any ideas on tensioning the whole belt conveyor, or a way to make a tail pulley
Best way for uploading pictures on this forum?
I also need to think of a way to make center supports. I figure 3 or 4 would be fine, thought about just using 2 pieces of pipe, one maybe 2 inch over a 1.5inch piece that will spin freely and just rest it under the belt. Put a few attachment points to the sides and drive pipe in the ground. That would get me by for as long as it needs to run.
Sorry if this post was long, Working a double shift and things are slow lol. I’ll add pictures from my laptop when I get home
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
