How to make rollers for a belt sander without a lathe

When making a belt sander, the main difficulty is the rollers. Many people simply buy them or cast them from aluminum and then turn them on a lathe. We offer a cheaper and easier way to make MDF rollers.

Materials:

• MDF 22-30 mm;
  
• thick-walled plastic pipes;
  
• bearings;
  
• glue;
  
• bolts M12-M14 with nut and washer.

Roller making process

The driven roller will consist of several MDF washers glued together. Moreover, a bearing must be pressed into each of them. Then the MDF blank will be pressed into a piece of plastic pipe.


On MDF blanks, blind holes are drilled with a Forstner drill to match the diameter of the bearings.

Then washers are drilled around them with a crown.

Bearings are pressed into the blind holes of the workpieces.

Next, you need to widen the hole from the core drill to the diameter of the inner race of the bearing.

Blanks with bearings are glued together in groups of 3-4 pieces. They can be tightened with a bolt and nut, through washers.



After the glue has set, the blanks are ground so that they can fit into a piece of plastic pipe. The workpieces must fit tightly into the tubes.



The lead video is much easier to make. It is enough to glue 3-4 MDF blanks together, and after they have set, cut out the blank on a jigsaw.

Then it is ground and glued into a plastic tube.

Watch the video