rotary sander - home made

I bought an old carcass from an airpalne builder that was previously used to sand ribs to size for cloth covered aircraft.
The design was pretty good but needed some tweaking to bring it up to tolerances for precision woodworking.

From sander pics

I first had to toss a fractional motor on it and balance it out to the sandpaper. I had a 3/4 hp X 1750 RPM here so used that on a 1:1: pulley system.
I can easily over power it but that is my guide _to not burning the blanks_. I seems to work well through several different grits of paper.

From sander pics

The leveling apparatus is simple but relatively accurate. It's composed of a bicycle chain drive and dual sprockets (

From sander pics

I found the bed a bit soft in that it could be pushed down on passes creating bumps on the sanded surface if you aren't careful.
I added a 1/2" sheet of mdf over the original sheet and screwed the two together.
Next, I laminated formica over the MDF to give me a smooth surface to run my stock

I had to add 2" strips on each side as the scrap bin only had 24"wide sheets but that just added to the aesthetics so not a bad thing.

From sander pics

From sander pics

From sander pics

From sander pics

The dust hood was just a piece of 6" galvanised ducting and really didn't do justice to picking up the dust.
I built an MDF cover that allows for brush skirts on front and back to direct dust to the collector rather than around the table.

From sander pics

Next, a link belt would be a nice addition as the rubber on has memory for a couple of minutes. everytime I turn it on