trag Posted February 25, 2009 Posted February 25, 2009 Anyone know a good source for spent laser printer transfer rollers? For ball mills of course. Those are the long rollers with the rubber cover. I was going to call some of the local shops that do laser printer repair, but they're all gone. I guess printers became so cheap to replace... And I freecycled my two old laser printers last year--and my washing machine motor, darn it. Was saving the motor in case I bought a compatible model machine after the transmission in the last one broke. Then we bought an entirely different brand. Sigh. The consequences of trying to get rid of junk, "I'll never have any use for." I may try the Goodwill Computer Store. I wonder if they'll let me have some rejects that don't make it into the store. My experience with them has generally been that they're reluctant to admit that there's a huge room back there full of stuff they can't sell.
Miech Posted February 25, 2009 Posted February 25, 2009 I don't know where you live, but if shipping from Holland isn't a problem I could demolish my old printer and send you one or two. I didn't have a look at it for years, so I don't know how much there are in there and of which size.
trag Posted February 25, 2009 Author Posted February 25, 2009 I don't know where you live, but if shipping from Holland isn't a problem I could demolish my old printer and send you one or two. I didn't have a look at it for years, so I don't know how much there are in there and of which size. That is very kind of you. Thank you. However, I am in Texas. I think the shipping would make it impracticle. I did a bit of Ebay shopping and found a seller with HP LJ 3P rollers for about $10 each shipped. However, I have sent an email to him asking if he has any HP 4V or similar rollers which are too worn for use in printers. It seems like a roller could easily be too worn for printer use and still perfectly good for ball mill use. The HP 4V supported 11" X 17" paper, so presumably its transfer roller must be at least 11" long instead of 8" long. Large format dot matrix printer plattens would also work, I think, but those are even harder to find these days.
trag Posted February 26, 2009 Author Posted February 26, 2009 I ended up with some 12" dot matrix printer platens--i.e. I've ordered them. They haven't arrived yet. I paid a bit more for them that I wanted to, but not too much. The platens are 12" in the covered portion and about 14" in the metal rod. That gives me the option of pretty large capacity barrels if I ever want them.
andyboy Posted February 26, 2009 Posted February 26, 2009 Nice idea, to bad you couldn't scrounge some up instead of ordering them. Most of my stuff is scrounged over a long period of time but I must say that that part is one of the most fascinating. Just walking, driving around and seeing something that you find a use for as soon as you spot it. It's automatic nowadays, I see stuff that can be used for pyro everyday, whatever I'm doing. Put some pics up when you're done, every design is an opportunity to learn something new.
trag Posted February 27, 2009 Author Posted February 27, 2009 Nice idea, to bad you couldn't scrounge some up instead of ordering them. Most of my stuff is scrounged over a long period of time but I must say that that part is one of the most fascinating. Just walking, driving around and seeing something that you find a use for as soon as you spot it. It's automatic nowadays, I see stuff that can be used for pyro everyday, whatever I'm doing. Put some pics up when you're done, every design is an opportunity to learn something new. Scrounging is definitely more rewarding. However, I did some mental calculations and deciding that buying actually made more sense for me in this case. I'm busy most of the time and, unfortunately, my daily routine doesn't take me places where I might see this stuff laying by the curb. . I had a choice of spending a bit more to have almost exactly what I want delivered to my door, ordered from my computer, or drive all over the place and spend lots of time on the phone trying to find it. And if I did find it on the phone, then drive all over trying to collect it. I decided I want to make a hobby out of building rocket motors, not out of scrounging. :-) We do have a day here every 7 months called "Bulky Item Pickup". The cool thing is that "Bulky Item Pickup" day is only specified as any day during week X. So all the stuff goes out on the curb on Sunday evening, and may be there until Friday--although often it gets picked up sooner. The last one was last month. If I had been thinking ball mill at that time, I would have driven/walked/ride around the neighborhood looking for usable gear. Now I don't want to wait for the next one. The city dump doesn't let folks in to scrounge. Anyway, I picked up six platens for about $85 shipped total. Four of them have 12" long covered areas. The other two are closer to 10". So I can make a triple barrel mill if I like, although, I guess I could have gotten away with one rubber coated roller per barrel instead of two. If I use 6" PVC for the barrel, then I get 3"^2 X pi X 12" = ~324 cu in = 1.4 gallons. Probably silly of me as I don't think I can afford the amount of brass I'd need as mill media. But three smaller barrels might be nice so that I can mill charcoal, sulfur and red gum simultaneously. I will post pictures when I get done. I don't have a final design yet. To a large extent it will depend on the materials I find.
tentacles Posted February 27, 2009 Posted February 27, 2009 (edited) Good lord! For $85 you could have built the whole ball mill out of standard industrial parts, including a motor. Something like this from surplus center: 5/8" PILLOW BLOCK BEARING Item# 1-202-10-P $7.95 in 1/8 HP 115 VAC 1725 RPM MOTOR Item# 10-1822 $13.99 in 5/8" X 36" KEYED SHAFTING Item# 1-2982-62-3 $19.50 in 6.75 O.D. 5/8 BORE 1 GROOVE PULLEY Item# 1-BK70-B $12.00 in 2.45 O.D. 1/2 BORE 1 GROOVE PULLEY Item# 1-BK24-A $4.00 in Those pulleys are just examples, I didn't do the math to figure out the needed speed. The only other thing you'd need would be some wood (a couple 2x4s and a bit of plywood, hacksaw, power cable, belt and some heater hose. Sure 1/8HP is a bit weak, but it's enough to run 6" jars for sure. Edited February 27, 2009 by tentacles
trag Posted February 27, 2009 Author Posted February 27, 2009 (edited) Good lord! For $85 you could have built the whole ball mill out of standard industrial parts, including a motor. No, not really, although I appreciate you posting the price list because I can definitely use the references to affordable parts. However, looking at the shaft you've referenced, I would need two or three of those at $20 to achieve the equivalent of what I picked up (potential for 3 jar mill). And that would leave me with bare metal shafts with no frictional coating. The shaft cost would be $40 to $60 which is not so far off the $85 I spent. Still, I appreciate the links to less expensive stuff. It will be useful. Especially the Pillow Block Bearing. My next thought was turning to bearings and how to implement them. That would do nicely. I'll need to check the shaft sizes and such, of course, but that gives me an excellent starting point. Edited February 27, 2009 by trag
tentacles Posted February 28, 2009 Posted February 28, 2009 The keyed shafting is only on there because they don't sell steel rod - you could pick up steel rod for nearly free at a local metal yard. Like $10 for a 20 foot stick. I'm interested to see how you'll drive the rollers, the ones I've seen in the past usually had a 1/4" steel rod as the load bearing ends - you can't put a whole lot of torque through 1/4". A cheaper alternative to pillow blocks is flange bearings, or even just raw ball bearings, drill a hole in the side of a 2x4 and cram/glue the bearing right into the hole. FrankRizzo made a post on this some time back in another ball mill thread. If you're looking to run 3 jars, I'd suggest a 1/2+ HP motor.
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