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Fabricating the v-belt pulley for crank flywheel

A project log for Motorizing a manual Leather Patcher

I'm adding a motor to a cheap, manual leather patcher sewing machine

polyfractalpolyfractal 02/22/2019 at 13:210 Comments

In this first video, I fabricate a v-belt pulley that will mount to the cast iron flywheel.  I originally wanted to groove the flywheel itself to accept the v-belt, but there are tracks on the inside of the flywheel that control the motion of the sewing arm.  Unfortunately, this track is perilously close to the edge of the flywheel in places, and I was afraid the v-belt groove would cut into the track.

So instead I fabricated the pulley out of some spare tooling aluminum plate I had laying around.  I don't own a lathe (yet!), so I was forced to mill out the pulley on a rotary table and various milling cutters + dovetail cutter.  The v-belt profile isn't correct/ideal, but for this application it shouldn't matter much.

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