Homemade Mini Bandsaw

This is a little project I made in my spare time over the summer while taking classes at Michigan Technological University. It was inspired by a wooden bandsaw I saw on woodgears.ca and is a little mini bandsaw that uses portable bandsaw blades and is powered by an AC capacitor start electric motor that I found in a dumpster behind the Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics building. The capacitor burned out, so I have to hand crank it to get it past the starting torque and up and running. I spent less than 10$ on this project and it works quite well, about 5$ for a blade and 3$ for a pipe and pipe floor flange to mount the drive crowned pulley and v-belt pulley to. The rest of the materials were scavenged from random places. The saw has three small wooden crowned pulleys that the blade tracks on, the top one moves up and down, for tensioning, in a slot, and the bottom, driven pulley, is pinned to the pipe shaft with a drywall screw. A pipe floor flange screws onto the end of the drive shaft and allows me to mount different size pulleys to be driven by the motor. In this video, I start her up and make two quick cuts, one through a piece of plywood and another through a piece of aluminum. The blade is a 24 tpi metal cutting blade. I only had money for one blade and wanted to be able to cut thin metal, so I figured a metal cutting blade would work well enough for most materials. I will be improving the design soon. The main problems being the unbalance of the v-belt pulley, the flange isn't true, and the size of the pulley blocking the table. The bolts also start to come loose as can be seen by the duct tape on the ends of some, but this shouldn't be a difficult fix. First I must repair the motor though, as she recently shorted out.
Enjoy and build your own!

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• home
• made
• homemade
• diy
• do
• miniature
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• yourself
• band
• saw
• bandsaw
• mechanical
• mechanics
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• portable
• pulley
• driven
• belt
• crowned
• crown
• tensioning
• mechanism
• pipe
• flange
• flangesblade
• cut
• cutting
• wood
• metal
• aluminum
• steel
• home-made
• project
• engineering
• student
• hobby
• electric
• motor
• capacitor
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• 10
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• doege
• benjamin
• walter
• civil

[fairyheli2]

when you hand start the motor thats a nice way to a loose a finger or two

[bwdoege]

@fairyheli2 Yes it is.

[tpm4life]

That thing has danger writen all over it. Nice rig man...

[bwdoege]

@tpm4life Thanks :)

[dlapp14]

That thing vibrates like a bastard. Either your shafts arent straight or youve used the wrong inner diameter pulleys for the chosen shafts. That looks dangerous you should fix that, it wouldnt be too hard. Eventually it will pull itself apart if it isnt balanced.

[bwdoege]

@dlapp14 The vibration is from the big v-belt pulley. It's mounted onto a pipe flange that has quite a bit of runout. If I get my motor working again, I may take the flanges into the shop and face them off on the lathe.

[HammerFET]

Clug.....Clug clug clug.....clug clug CLUG GRRRRRRRrrr..... Awesome :P

[5937824]

you should use some bearing blocks for the pully. It would turn smoother

[rickwolgram]

Good job if you build it you can fix it even make it beter.

[fairyheli2]

@bwdoege not complaining or anything, I hate health and safety

[thewho44racing]

hi dude..am trying dis project on my own, could u pls tel me d working, requirements,specifications,mo­tor capacity more clearly so dat it'l be helpful 4 me 2 make an attempt!! waiting 4 an earlier reply..

[xOrhan1976]

I have read description, i must say i appreciated your effort and will to finish that, congratilations.

Personally i find it a little dangerous, but im sure you have already updated it and its not that shaky right now. Thanks alot for sharing your videos.