Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

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Jim Dobson
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Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

Post by Jim Dobson »

Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

I've always wanted to work out a way to put some extra grip on a home made drive pulley to prevent or cut down on belt slippage. It would be nice to have the tooling that Wilesco use on their grooved pulleys. I had a Dremel saw accessory that the outer plastic shell broke and I thought what can I do with the saw blade. Rudimentary, but it worked well. I should be able to work out now a way to mount it so it doesn't need to be held, though its not as dangerous as that looks and being hand held allowed me to skew the saw blade at the various angles needed easily.

https://youtu.be/VvU9q2UViiM
Cheers Jim
My Youtube Channel -
Blue Heeler's Model & Toy Steam Engine Room
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Bill Shields
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Re: Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

Post by Bill Shields »

belt life???
Too many things going on to bother listing them.
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Jim Dobson
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Re: Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

Post by Jim Dobson »

Bill Shields wrote: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:28 pm belt life???
Its not as sharp as it looks and the green watchmakers lathe belting that I use is very durable.
Cheers Jim
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jcfx
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Re: Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

Post by jcfx »

That's an interesting way of getting a texture in that pulley, I like it, it was kind of like knurling but with a saw blade.
I wonder if it might be better to mount the saw arbor to something that could be held in a tool holder and stack
blades till you get the width you need to texture the groove ?
tetramachine
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Re: Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

Post by tetramachine »

If it's a flat belt. I just would run a knurling tool across at face of it.
If a vee belt I would increase the size of both pulleys, to keep the ratio.
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RET
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Re: Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

Post by RET »

Hi Jim,

The conventional way of getting more grip on a round belt and thus transferring more power is to use a pair of appropriately sized "V" belt pulleys. The "V" supplies the grip from the wedging action of the belt in the pulley groove.

The conventional included angle of the "V" between the pulley faces is 60 degrees, but if you need a stronger grip, you can get it easily by making the angle less, 50 degrees, or maybe even as little as 45 or 40. Don't go too low because the frictional losses increase as the angle gets smaller. If you need a size or shape of pulley that you don't have, the pulleys are easy to make from aluminum and you will need to make your own if you decide to use a non standard angle.

Flat belts run with less power loss, but can't transmit as much power for the same size. Timing belts however, can transmit lots more power for their size and they have the added feature of staying perfectly in step; just look at the timing belt that runs the overhead valves in many of today's car engines.

Hope this helps a bit.

Richard Trounce.
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Jim Dobson
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Re: Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

Post by Jim Dobson »

RET wrote: Sat Oct 17, 2020 10:08 pm Hi Jim,

The conventional way of getting more grip on a round belt and thus transferring more power is to use a pair of appropriately sized "V" belt pulleys. The "V" supplies the grip from the wedging action of the belt in the pulley groove.

Hi Richard, yes totally agree, but this is for light weight toy steam driven accessories not machinery.
Cheers Jim
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atunguyd
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Re: Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

Post by atunguyd »

Redacted comment...

Originally I was going to suggest looking at toothed belts but then I realised that the purpose of your post was not looking for advise but showing us a technique you came up with. So I edited it to rather say
Nice work



RET
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Re: Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

Post by RET »

Hi Jim,

The "V" belt pulleys will also work for the "toys" too, although the absolute efficiency will be a little lower. However, what you have done will work perfectly for your application. It might not be the best choice for some other things, but for your application it is pretty hard to beat for efficiency.

Another possible way to get the effect you want is to chuck the appropriate size tap in the lathe and hold the pulley that you want to modify on a shaft so it can rotate, then bring the pulley up to the rotating tap which will cut grooves in the pulley periphery. This works better if the pulley is made from a soft metal like aluminum and the tap has a fine thread pitch.

There is usually more than one way to get where you want to go; which one you choose will depend on your individual preference and the tools at your disposal.

Richard Trounce.
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Jim Dobson
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Re: Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

Post by Jim Dobson »

Thanks Richard.
Cheers Jim
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Blue Heeler's Model & Toy Steam Engine Room
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Jim Dobson
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Re: Putting some grip (stippling) on an aluminium drive pulley.

Post by Jim Dobson »

Works very well for its intended purpose on Model & Toy Steam -

https://youtu.be/3vrtwvM2_hw
Cheers Jim
My Youtube Channel -
Blue Heeler's Model & Toy Steam Engine Room
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