2" shaft mounting Pt.34: All metal bearing housings.

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All that lovely 6" wide 10mm strip is drawing me back to the scrap yard like a siren. If only it were an inch wider! I drew a blank at the second, local scrap yard. It is entirely by chance that one can find really decent stuff like this. Most of it is corroded, drilled all over, scraped or bent to hell or is quickly gone. Some yards used to keep the good stuff aside to sell to willing customers at above the daily scrap metal rate.

Most [virgin] metal stockholders in Denmark will not deal with private customers. Even if they did, then their delivery charges can make a mockery of scrap yard, cash prices.

The siren call of the 6" alloy strips was answered. I bought 6 meters of 15cm x 10mm x  [20' x 6" x 3/8"] alloy strip [plate] in excellent condition for about £40 [$50US.] For 24kg or 50lbs I thought this price was very fair indeed. I should have easily enough to clad both bearing housings and lots more left for the base. It is smarter and stiffer than oak strips and completely immune to damp! It will even take a thread.

The metal clad housing certainly looks far better than wood. At least to my eyes. My desire for 7" wide strip proved to be a hangover from the wooden housings. 6" is actually a smidgen too wide where the plates rest naturally against the enclosed studs. [all threads]

I need to trim two plates if they are going to be sandwiched between two 'outers.' That won't be a lot of fun because it takes a quarter of an hour just to saw across one 6" width with the electric jigsaw. [US: sticksaw?] That was with frequent stops to lightly oil the blade and the cutting line. Otherwise the teeth just build up metal and won't cut. Perhaps I should examine other jigsaw blades intended for light alloys. I just used the last remaining 'metal' cutting blade in my limited collection. I mostly cut wood with the jigsaw.

There was lots of noisy abrading with a coarse disk on the angle grinder to get this far. The ends needed to be smoothed, squared and trued with a try square after the sawing. Since the plates define the squareness of the flange bearings the ends must be absolutely square.

The declination housing plates are 42cm or 16.5" long between the flange bearings. Slightly longer than the polar axis housing at 14". The declination wormwheel has to be added and room left for the counterweights. I don't need to add load spreading plates now to protect the previous wood panels from being crushed. Though I do need a worm support plate for both axes.

Click any image for an enlargement.

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