Sunday, April 10, 2011

Cement Mixer Update

The cement mixer is finally breathing! I met the short term team that brought the pulleys over at the airport at 2:30 the other morning, and after a bit of adapting, we've got things going! The big main pulley fit just right - thanks to the $25 micrometer that was sent over in the last container! We did need to do a bit of work to make the key stock that keeps the pulley from slipping on the shaft, but half an hour on the bench grinder turned a chunk of rebar into a pretty well fitted section of square key stock!


Sometimes you just have to do what you can...


A near perfect fit!

The motor we're using was donated and sent over in the container a couple of years ago. It was crated, and didn't want to start when I opened it up. After taking apart and cleaning the carb, it seems to be running pretty well. The pulley we bought for the motor is the wrong size because the supplier I found at the last minute didn't have metric sized pulleys like the motor's shaft is. So, we did a little careful bending of a piece of sheet metal and it did a great job of filling in the gap between the 20mm shaft and the 7/8" pulley opening!

Not bad!

We found and cleaned up the nameplate on it, it's an Italian machine (Dieci) from 1989. It looks pretty good for its age - and it's getting ready to start its second life, for us.

All we need to do now is patch a couple of rusted spots of sheet metal and find/adapt some wheels for it!

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