gravity roller rescue

[ned]

so i bought a saw to make square cuts, but it cant make square cuts unless its fed, so i need to feed it with a roller table.

But i bought the saw this month so I'm broke, so i bought these below for 90 euros.
And now i need to sort them out.

I bought some festool track with me when buying it, and running it along the rollers , it looked pretty good. No obvious deformations that i could spot. I'll run a string along the length of it tomo after work, so i know where im at.

I guess this was made on some sort of jig, if I'm wrong id love to know how its done.

7 of the rollers are screwed. Some have been welded, but it wasnt centered properly so they have to go.

Im cutting it after the broken one below, though 2 and 3 after it are okay, the ones after have been repaired badly.

I intend using a full length on the feed side and 66.66% of the other one on the far side, or thereabouts.
Like below. Imagine please the square box on top is the bandsaw. I'll make long continuous low table out of the two sections and mount the bandsaw midway along.

So what i dont know is, can these rollers come apart? If they can, i can clean it up properly, if not, ill have to work with it as it is.

I've realised that i can take a slice out of the top rail of the steel and replace rollers that way, and the remaining bottom face of the hole will keep the rollers square / even / spot on.

Any and all insight or advise appreciated, regards.

 

[pedrobedro]

Take the pin out of the end of the axle and pull the axle through one way.

 

[ned]

Cheers Pedro. i tried that on one of them but it wouldnt budge. I'll give it a go again tomoorrow.

 

[Ton-up]

As said, the rods just knock through. They are probably just rusted in!
Bearings are available, but I have found that it is just as easy to buy new rollers.
Its amazing what a plenty of oil will do to old rollers like that.

 

[thinfourth]

Grind the end of the axle flush with the angle iron and knock it through with a pin punch

Then chuck the roller away

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Medium-He...hash=item25844822ce:m:my7DiPUct4BHEtXOVU49oyQ

if you can't afford new ones then vary the spacing

The further from the machine the wider the space between the rollers can be.

If you start with a 6m long piece and want to cut 1/3rd off then you need 1 support at the machine and 1 support 4m away from the machine and then the piece is supported at either end and square.

Take you 4m and cut 1/3rd off again and you need one support at the machine and 1 support 2.6 from the machine

1/3rd again and 1 at the machine and one 1.7m away

1/3rd again and 1 at the machine and one 1.1 away


So you can see the distance to your end roller keeps coming down.

Also for the 4 mtr cut you don't need a support at 4m as if the material is strong enough you could have a 1m overhang.


I have set up a similar roller tray for myself and close to the machine the rollers are about double the pitch you have just now

Further from the machine it is about 4 times the pitch you have.

So you have more then enough rollers to make a HUGE roller rack

 

[bricol]

Axles sometimes spring loaded, so try tapping them from the other side if one way they are solid.

 

[thinfourth]

Oh and they are probably stub axles

so one short axle per side

Not one through the middle

 

[Ton-up]

sprung loaded ones don't generally need wires in the end. They will be rods right through.

 

[ned]

nice one lads good stuff, info to work with, cheers !

 

[ned]

@thinfourth hey there, appreciate your detailed reply, very interesting stuff indeed. Can I ask, have you a pic of your roller table?

 

[thinfourth]

I shall see what i can do

But you should have got the general idea.

imagine you have two rollers only and how you would set them for different lengths of cut and you will quickly see what you can get away with.

 

[ned]

so you guys were right, the axle's do slide out. I chose to attack a seized one yesterday, which is why i thought they were all stuck fast.

so i have 37 good rollers. 8 bad ones.

I was thinking of cleaning these with sodium carbonate to remove the rust. might use a wheelie bin as the container. Never tried it before, no notion will it work, seems worth a try.

I ran the festool track along the frames. 1 of them was 'okay' and the other is warped. So I have to make a totally new table.

It's going to be 14 feet long.

The original frames are 50 x 50 x 6mm angle.

I'm planning on using 60 x 40 x 3mm box section to make the frame
and then using 50 x 50 x 3mm angle sitting on that, to hold the rollers.

hope you can follow this diagram, its not the best. i didnt finish the opposite side but you get the idea

Is 3mm enough i wonder. I reckon it'll be fine...

 

[thinfourth]

Here is mine

12foot long and 6 rollers

Works perfectly with the box section being a few mm below the top of the rollers so if an end drops it goes onto the box section but most of the weight is on the rollers.

 

[ned]

thinfourth thats very nice of you to do that, thanks. I bought steel for mine, will prob start it saturday, unless I fall off the wagon, in which case I'll do nothing until tuesday.

Can I ask, when you were making yours, did you just square it on the ground?

I'm having mental issues with making things square, way overthinking it. I dont have a flat surface to work off.

I cant get passed the notion that the two long side bars , if they were sitting outside the earths orbit, as objects in space, should be perfectly parallel.
To the extent that they would run parallel into infinity, that's the ideal.

I'm not trained and this is a hobby for me. I'm building a CNC plasma table and that will have to be very square.
I'm treating this roller table as a practice run for that.

 

[pedrobedro]

I dont have a flat surface to work off.

I cant get passed the notion that the two long side bars , if they were sitting outside the earths orbit, as objects in space, should be perfectly parallel.
To the extent that they would run parallel into infinity, that's the ideal.

If the rollers are following the earth's curvature you are making them way too long If your rollers are all the same length and fit between the rails then they are parallel enough.

 

[ned]

hahhahahha

 

[Ton-up]

Doesn't matter about the floor, the rollers need to be parallel to your saw bed otherwise you will cut out of square. They need to keep the material at 90 deg to your blade with the blade at zero deg.