Steampunk Belt Grinder

I've been wanting a 2X72 belt grinder for a while now, and after getting a free working treadmill that I had no need for about a year ago, (I've made it a personal motto of mine to only run when being chased by zombies) I decided to build one.

Supplies Used

• 2" X 2" X 3/16"rectangular tubing for the main frame.
• 1-1/2" X 1-1/2" X 3/16" rectangular tubing for the slides of the platen, the table and the top wheel support.
• 14ga Hot Rolled steel sheet
• 1/8" Hot Rolled steel sheet.
• 3/16" Hot Rolled steel sheet.
• 1/4" Hot Rolled steel sheet.
• 3/8" Hot Rolled steel sheet.
• Flat Black paint
• Antique Gold Gilders Paste
• Silver Gilders Paste
• Various Switches
• Vintage Style Voltmeter
• Treadmill motor
• Various bolts
• Hinges
• 2X72 belts
• Belt Grinder Wheels
• Brass Flathead machine screws

Tools Used

Luckily, I have a CNC plasma cutting table which helped a lot in this build. I also used quite a few other metalworking tools

• Angle grinder
• Metal Cutting Bandsaw
• Chop saw
• Die grinder
• Cut off disk
• Flap disk
• Drill press
• Die grinder wheels
• Welding gloves
• Welding helmet
• Screwdrivers

I really liked the idea of Jeremy Schmidt's grinder with the tilt-able belt, but wasn't sure I really needed that. Plus I didn't have a lot of 3/8" steel left over and didn't want to buy more. I liked the simple design of DCKnives grinder and had all the steel so I decided to go with that one.

I bought a set of wheels on eBay right away so I would be committed, then got some belts and after taking way too long, I started to build.

Normally, when I build a tool, I paint them all the same color. Machinery gray. And this one was going to be the same. I might throw in some black too just to be crazy. I really liked the simple look of this one and planned on it looking pretty much just like this when complete.

But that tilting belt thing from Jeremy Schmidt's design kept bugging me, so I thought that if I thought I could somehow incorporate that into my grinder, I would at least TRY to do it. It turns out I could, and it works pretty well too!

One thing I didn't like about the DCKnives grinder design was to change the belt, you have push down on the top of the Pillar with your hand, to loosen the belt and remove it. In Dan's design, he attached an 8-Ball to the top to make it more comfortable to push on. I've seen others using a golf ball, a novelty skull, a baseball etc... but I didn't really like that idea that much. I've seen other designs with a lever to pull down and I thought I'd try to incorporate that into the design, so I drew up this lever and mount, (highlighted in yellow) then cut it out on my CNC table.

The lever worked awesome! I even had a stainless steel ball bearing laying around so I used that as the tip. It LOOKED really good too...

A little TOO good I thought to myself. Too good to be on this boring, simple, gray grinder that I was building......

At this point in the build I found myself using the lever to compress the pillar all the time because it worked so well and looked so nice. During this time I kept thinking the lever and mount reminded me of something......

STEAMPUNK!

It was then that I decided to make the worlds first "Steampunk Belt Grinder." (I couldn't find one on the Google so I'm making that claim right now damnit!) I'm not really into steampunk, but I do appreciate the look, and I've always wanted to make something functional in the steampunk theme. Now I guess I have a piece of functional art!

I like to use Corel Draw to draw up my designs. I can draw up all the pieces to scale, put them together and see how it looks. I can change colors, shapes etc. before I make my final decision on how something will look. Then, when I've finally made my decision, I export the drawings of the parts I need cut, to my plasma cutter and cut them out. This is when I figured out how I wanted it to look.

Then I broke it down into the parts I would need to build it, and started cutting out those parts on my CNC plasma table. It's made by Practical CNC and I got it in 2006.

After tearing the treadmill apart to get to the DC motor, I found that there were two control boards that were used to power and control the motor. The treadmill used a membrane switch style control panel to control the power and speed. I didn't want to use that large membrane switch so I found where the switch was connected to the board, then found which pins that were used for the "speed up" "speed down" and "stop". I used a simple jumper wire to do my testing and it worked great!

My motor had this large flywheel on it that I didn't need, underneath that, the motor had a threaded shaft. My main pulley had a keyed shaft with a hole that was larger than the motor shaft. I ended up cutting the majority of the wheel of the flywheel off with a hand plasma cutter, so it was just the very center of the flywheel left. Then I put that center back on the motor, and spun the motor while using a grinder on it to get it cleaned up and smooth. Finally I used a file to get the outside diameter of the flywheel (or what was left of it) to be perfect fit for the inside diameter of the pulley.

OK... so I lost all my pictures of the day I did all the welding and metalwork... Sorry about that. But after that was done, I sprayed everything with flat black paint. Then after it dried, I used Gilders Paste in Antique Gold and Silver made by DecoArt Metallic Lustre, then clear coated over them with matte clear spray. to give it that vintage look! I applied it with a rag on my finger.

Steampunk has gears right? Good lord I hope so! I used enough of them. Anywhere I needed a washer, I cut out a gear instead. If there was a knob needed, you bet it was a gear! I cut a bunch of random gears and even put them in places where I thought it looked a little boring. I attached those extra gears with flat head, brass machine bolts, welded them in place or even stuck them on with rare earth magnets!

I needed somewhere to store those two circuit boards so I built a framed box below the grinder to house them. I made four panels to enclose the box. I cut vents in the back panel, added more gears to the side panels (of course) and added some vintage style lights and switches on the front panel.

I have a vinyl plotter so I drew up and cut out some vinyl detail graphics and lettering in gold. Dan Comeau from DC Knives calls his belt grinder the BG-272. I wanted to give him credit for the design, but added the "SP" at the end for my Steampunk touch. I also added a working, vintage style, voltage gauge (totally not necessary) to the front.

yes, I did end up incorporating a tilting design into it. It works great!

Enjoy some final build pics of my Steampunk Belt Grinder. Again... I'm claiming that as of right now, it's the only one in existence! (We'll see how long that lasts) Thanks for viewing this Instructable, it's my first! I had a great time building this, and I use it a lot. The BG-272 from DC Knives is a great, simple design, and easy to build. If you'd like to build your own, he has a detailed build page with plans for free (minus all the steampunk stuff) at: http://dcknives.blogspot.com/p/2-x-72-belt-grinder.html .

Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to answer them as best I can!