Stand alone buffing setup?

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Carl Fisher

Carl Fisher

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Joined
Jun 7, 2011
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Cape Coral, FL
I think the time has come to setup a dedicated buffing station not mounted on either of my lathes. I'm tired of having to reconfigure one of them for buffing. That said I'm also looking for something compact enough to have 2 stations side by side. One for pens and one for metal only.

PSI has one in the $80 range for a variable speed motor with a wheel on either side. Is this a reasonable machine or is there a better option out there possibly with a bit larger wheel? 4" is a bit on the small side. Perhaps a 6" or 8" size would be preferred.
 
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I use my old Shop Fox lathe as a dedicated buffer, it really does save a tremendous amount of time. Good luck with your new set-up, wish I could offer more info.
 
I'm doing some digging and I may end up building one. I have a spare motor on hand from my 1014 before I converted it to variable speed. I might do some sort of setup on a turn table that has the wheels for metal polishing on one side and rotate it for pens on the other. Just need to figure out which wheels I want to go with.

I'm used to the 2 wheel setup from Barry Gross, but want to go with larger wheels on the new setup.
 
Carl,
Some folks just take an old or extra bench grinder and put buffing wheels on it. Sometimes a block of wood is used to elevate it for a larger wheel. This might help save some bucks!
 
I'm tossing around ideas in my head for awhile now for a stand alone setup using the 3 wheel on beall mandrel type setup.

Something that folds up out of the way.

Probably with never come to fruition but I'm still thinking about it.


Ooo, how about a 5 wheel using both beall and Barry's setup. :-)
 
Think: old Craftsman lathe (Large single steel tube for the bed). It is a nice choice. The design was around for a long time and may be easy to find and cheap. I got mine free. You can cut the bed to any desired length, and it has the advantage of choosing your desired speed. I bought a piece of all-thread for the shaft, turned an approximate MT-1 taper on one end and use a live MT-1 center in the tailstock. Very happy with results, using two 6" buffs.
 
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My set up

I'm not a big HF fan, but I bought the buffer referenced above with the coupon and it works perfectly.

I then looked into the type of wheels and compounds being used by Beall and others and was able to get them easily from Amazon. I tossed the cheapo wheels that came with the buffer.

The compound is the blue stuff and a huge 1# stick was about $15 with free shipping.

Then you just need one sewn soft wheel for the compound and one very soft fluffy one for the polish.

Works awesome and the whole setup was about $60.

Next thing I'm going to try is adding an old speed control to slow down the buffer.
 
From what I'm finding, the motor used on the HF buffer is an induction style motor which means you can't just hook it up to a speed control (triac or variac style for universal motors). I think you'd need a variable frequency drive (VFD) but those are likely going to cost quite a bit more than you paid for the buffer itself.
 
I have two of the Harbor Freight 6" buffers. At $40 (on sale, less if you use a coupon too), it becomes worthwhile not having to change buffing wheels. Actually, I'm planning to get a third one (since I've taken to using the blue compound too).

Just be aware that these are not continuous duty buffers. If you run them too long, they'll get quite hot. After I once smelled the windings burning, I've taken to switching them on and off for each piece I buff (even in a single buffing session).

I hope that helps,
Eric
 
Well, my buffing sessions rarely last more than an hour. When I first got the HF buffer, I left it running even when I wasn't actively buffing something. That's when I noticed it getting very hot (hot enough to avoid touching the motor housing) and smelled the winding insulation burning. Now, whenever I pause to wipe excess compound off a part (before moving to another wheel), or to pick up a new part, I switch the buffer off. Oftentimes, I'll switch it back on while the buffer is still spinning down, so I'd guess I'm running around a 50% duty cycle. That's probably more than it's designed for.

If the motor housing gets hot (not just warm) to the touch, I'll go do something else for a while. I haven't smelled it burning since, and I've been using that buffer for a few years now.

The other advantage of a second buffer, is that if the first one burns out, I can swap buffs and keep working.

As far as buffs and compounds go, I bought a variety of each from Caswell Plating a while back. There seems to be a fair amount of contradictory information on what buffs to use, so I just tried out a few combinations. So far, I haven't used sisal wheels on anything. Spiral sewn cotton wheels work well with black (emery) and brown (tripoli) compounds. Loose cotton wheels do fine with green, white (white diamond), and blue compounds. If I use a dry buff, I use a Canton flannel wheel.

I tried the plastic and plastic-glo bars with Canton flannel wheels, but didn't get as good a final shine as with the blue compound. So, I don't use them anymore.

I hope that helps,
Eric
 
Check into a Baldor buffing unit. These people make one of the worlds finest buffers.
They come as small as 1/4 hp all the way up to a full 1hp. At one time I ran two of the
1hp units and can testify to their superb quality.

Ben
 
Eric,
Are the harbor freight buffers fairly quiet?

I'm close to pulling the trigger. I'm thinking the wheels included would be good enough for the occasional aluminum blank and get a separate set from Caswell to wood/acrylic
 
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