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Fabricating a motor pulley adapter

A project log for Motorizing a manual Leather Patcher

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

polyfractalpolyfractal 02/27/2019 at 14:250 Comments

In this video I fabricate an adapter that mounts to the face of the hubmotor, and allows attaching a small cast pulley.  I had several options for attaching the belt to the motor.  I could have put the pulley on the outside diameter of the hub motor, which would have been the simplest.  But I wanted better gear reduction.  I could also have attached the pulley to the back faceplate which would have been very simple, since the plate is just bolted on.  But I was afraid placing the pulley there would have made mounting the shaft difficult (not much clearance).

So I opted to bolt an adapter to the face of the rotor bell.  It looked like there was plenty of material to work with, after facing off the decorative details.  But as it turned out the bell was very thin (and an uneven casting).  So there were some amusing moments like my center punch going straight through the bell :)

Got the job done, but certainly not the prettiest or most professional arrangement.  A fair amount of runout, and the adapter piece is pretty ugly.  But it should work :)

The adapter is a piece of mild steel, not because it needed to be, but because I wanted some practice at machining steel.

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