Drive pulley

Hello everyone,

I’m looking for a source for a 1.5” bore pulley for an 8 x 12 C&P. Diameter doesn’t matter much since I will be ordering a Teco vfd controller and matching motor to control the speed.

Thanks,

Patrick @ The Fairplay Press

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Your local farm supply store, your local industrial supply house, McMaster-Carr, eBay, other on-line suppliers which you can Google, etc.

I would suggest that the pulley diameter does matter. C&P press shafts run very slowly as compared to most motor shafts. Just because your motor will be variable speed doesn’t mean that it will be good to run it very slowly all the time. I would make the motor pulley quite small and the press pulley quite large, so the motor can run faster even though the press won’t be going that fast. Hopefully someone who has such a setup will give you their pulley diameters.

I assume you are going with a V-belt and V-belt pulleys rather than with a flat belt.

Goeffrey,

Yes, v-belt pulleys. I’ve tried all the usual suspects and the largest bore I can find is 1 7/16. The pulley wheel I’m looking at is 18” and the motor is 1 hp.

I take it you’ve micced your shaft and it is a true 1.5”? First option would be that you could buy one of the 1.4375” ID pulleys and get it bored out to 1.5” and the keyway cut slightly deeper by a local machinist. The ones on McMaster-Carr certainly appear to be beefy enough to allow for it. Another option would be the split-bushing pulleys they sell. Those have the option of a 1.5” shaft diameter.

Michael Hurley
Titivilus Press
Memphis, TN

McMaster-Carr — part number 6086K19 bushing and p/n 6407A45 pulley

I don’t think you need a 1 HP motor. I used a 1/6 HP motor off an old water pump to power my 8 X 12 C&P and it worked fine. I had to give the flywheel a push to get it started, but that was not a problem. It was a fixed speed motor, so I rigged up a system with an intermediate shaft and different sized pulleys to reduce the speed further than I could reduce it without the extra shaft. My system had a stepped pulley so I had different speed options. I don’t have it any more so unfortunately can’t send pictures.

This has been discussed before on Briar Press, so you should be able to do a search for it here.

By the way, my press came with a flat belt pulley, and I could still use that pulley with V-belts and V-belt pulleys for the rest of the system. I had it that way for 32 years.

Thanks for the information everyone. I know that the 1 hp motor is oversized but it is at a good price combined with the VFD unit. I have a couple of motors that I could rig up to work with this press but it is much more simple and safe to use the vfd and 3 phase output to control the speed. Thanks again.

Fairplay Press