In this video I make a drum sander from some repurposed plywood, PVC drainpipe and an old waterpump motor I had laying around.
The drum sander is an open ended design, based on pictures I saw of the JET drum sanders. I had my doubts this would be strong enough when made from wood, but deflection seems to be minimal and it gives great results. I obviously watched the other drum sander builds on youtube, but I decided to give this design a try. In this first part I make the basic drum sander. The drums are 40 cm (16") long and I wrap them with a 5 cm (2") wide sanding belt. The belt is 'locked ' onto the sanding drum by inserting the tips of the belt in thin slices I made in the ends of the pvc pipe. The conveyor belt is made from 3 80-grit belts, glued onto a cloth layer. The drum and belt are parallel by tilting the conveyor belt up and down just like. At the end I did flip the conveyor assembly around (not on video) so I had a longer infeed and a shorter outfeed.
Future changes (part 2) will be the addition of a small DC motor to drive the conveyor belt, 3D printed drum interior parts for consistency, a handle for the height adjustment, a base and a coat of paint.
Thanks for watching!
