In my decades in the shop, one thing I've learned. There is no horse so dead that it can't stand one more beating. We look forward with anticipation the next balancer video.
Hello. im currently an apprientice in machining in Germany. I think i have a solution to your problem. Our most recent toppic was: Cooling solutions. Especialy Mistcooling. We could proof, that while cutting with "an undefined cutting geometry" (Grinding, honing and lapping) mistcooling worsens the surface quality. Floodcooling or dry Air resulted in the best surfaces. The Grindingwheel nooks and holes get "Sticky" from mistcoolant and the super fine metal partikles gets stuck in there. but only the super super fine ones. You can only realy seee them in a microscope. Aditional do NEVER NEVER EVER start your wet-cooling with a stationary grindingwheel. The wheel is pourus like a sponge, coolant seeps (if stationary) on one side in, and throws your perfect balance WAY of. In Germany we (of course) have laws of safety for machinists, and one of it is: Cooling only AFTER spinning. Please be prepared, if you try to aircool your grinder, it can create a fire hazard
Thank you for sharing. I use a surface grinder quite often at work but wasn't taught this by the old boy due to retire. I also use centerless grinders but the coolant is never switched off during the day possibly for the same reason.
I have to say that you’re really pretty adept with 3D printing. The bad thing about using the Knipex pliers (I use them too for things I “shouldn’t”) is that you’ll get complaints about your using them.
One tip for final balancing, if you give the wheel a little bit of starting motion and watch where it settles each time starting in different positions this can help reduce the influence of starting static friction. This can also help identify if there is an issue in your adjustment of level, or bend in the rails of your balancer.
I think that would be interesting to experiment with, but I would want a better quality arbor than this abomination from Tormach. The tool marks in the shaft are probably the biggest source of error at the moment. It's too long to grind in my lectric centers, unfortunately. I could buy the Sopko shaft, but it's over $400, so unless I start getting issues in the grind I can't overcome, I think this is close enough. Don't tell Robin Renzetti I said that. :)
@@Clough42 I'd say, if you're in a making mood, you could probably turn a shaft yourself with a nice toolpost grinder, depending on just how long a shaft you need. especially because grinding is a very low tool pressure operation when you're pretty much sparking a surface perfect
Watching your 3D printed parts materialize; we TOTALLY _never_ do that. 3D printers are the new pen plotters. We never watched those either because we were always all yelled at to go back to our desks and get back to work.
ROFL! Yea I remember the first time I set up a plotter, sent it a text file to print out and watched it meticulously as it drew out the text. Yea, I just might have spent an hour or so staring at that thing... The funny thing is it was working with 7-bit ASCII and 7-bit serial communication. 7-bits, one stop bit, one parity. X-On / X-Off handshake. So making it print correctly was an interesting exercise. I think I had worked at the company about two weeks at the time, and I had never worked with serial protocols before. So I was dropped off in the deep end with a set of manuals and told to get it working... Edit: You know what else I've spent way to much time of my life staring at? Defragmentation utilities. Especially those that would color code files so you would see just how they were shuffled around to make space to write them into contiguous blocks. There was something hypnotical about seeing all this data being moved about. And I know I wasn't the only one hypnotized into staring slack jawed as the computer created order out of chaos on the HDD... When WinXP did away with the graphic representation of the process I was both relieved that I no longer would risk staring at it for hours on end, and so irritated at my guilty pleasure being denied me.
Using the Knipex pliers to take off the nuts of the wheel is perfectly fine! Since they have parallel jaws that tighten the more you grip on a fastener they are better that wrenches for this task. I used them on aircraft hydraulic “B” nuts since any damage to the nut would require the complete replacement of the line as well as the nut..
I'm not a grinder and never used that. But I was surprised when after you balanced that wheel so nicely, you dressed the wheel, and didn't balance again. My thinking is that you balanced "elliptical" wheel. But now that you've dressed it, you removed that weight from the extra material that you've dressed out. It would have been really interesting to put the wheel back on the balancer to see the effect of the dressing on the balance. Also would have been super interesting to see the difference, if any, of the grind surface quality between your last result and the result of re-balancing the wheel after the dressing.
Great! As a mechanical engineer, I really enjoy seeing your approaches to mechanical design with these types of projects and walkthroughs. One of the many reasons you have one of my favorite channels. Congrats on 100k recently too 👏
I just got an X1 Carbon and I definitely sit and watch it. Sometimes I sit next to the printer and watch the print on the video feed in the app because I’m insane. Really nice balancers, now that you know they work you can make them out of metal. I think that horse still has a pulse.
I recently just bought my first surface grinder, an older Manual 618 Okamoto. Currently trying to tool it up for everything I have planned for it. Bc of the limited space a my home shop I was able to convince my boss at my day job to let me install the machine up there, which was super cool on his part, but it is def having an effect on the time its taking for getting everything set up and operational in the way I want by not having it at my disposal 24/7. A couple of day ago though, I finished all the CAD work and literally just ordered the materials I'll need (I'm a "if it's made from metal, it will be better or at least stronger" kinda guy, regardless of alloy chosen) to make my own wheel balancer based off of the Tormach-style design (but using low carbon steel for the body rather than cast iron). Still contemplating whether I want to weld the body/base of the balancer together or just use fasteners for that, either way, it's pretty ironic to see you putting out videos right now for a similar project. Cool stuff man. Appreciate getting to learn from your efforts for my own stuff.
Great Video. Please take some care with the sparks entering the dust bag of the ShopVac. Any spark in the dust may cause a smolder and ignite sometime later when youre away from the shop. You would, of course, have a couple of smoke detectors in the shop but just a safety tip. cheers from NZ
@clough42 Good point - the same would apply to the vac hose where they are hottest and can build up, so make sure it is capable of reasonable temps, whatever that is.... With the shield you could lower it down to just clearing the part so about 10mm or so it looks like - then would would catch even more, or a flexible extension?. Finally you say you put the diamond behind centre so if it catches it will push out of the way. It will if it SLIDES but if it TIPS then not so much. If you wanted to ensure that wasn't to occur then the diamond should be past the rear of the holder so that it pivots away. The I would think it was best to have the folder shaped or sized so it will hit the wheel rather than be grabbed by it. Finally AWESOME video amongst a never ending stream of AWESOME videos. Wish I could use Fusion360 as well as you. G'day from Aus - us neighbours have to stick together :)
Hi James. My experiments with this same thing ended up with large, skinny brass wheels (85 mm dia, 2.5 mm thick), with tiny bearings from hard drives press fit into their centres. The bearings had their grease covers removed, and they were then flushed out with acetone, then alcohol, and air-hose dried. The wheels have a blunt knife edge (like a butter knife). This all resulted in extrememly low friction and inertia, which worked well for me. The wheels can also be weight relieved on the lathe if required, which will help for inertia. Thumbs up!
Did you use brass just for ease of machining? Seems like a harder material (or at least a harder rim) would be preferred. Great idea for the bearings! I was envisaging a similar setup using small ball bearings for model RC cars which are quite inexpensive but ones from a hard drive will be in a different league in terms of precision and overall quality.
@@ferrumignis Yes, and its all I had. But since this is such a low dynamics application, it really does not matter. Aluminium wuold have been fine as well, I guess, but not wood, for example.
@@ferrumignis And yes, those HD bearings are amazing. I used high quality Hitachi drives' bearings. Others may vary, such as Seagate, which I find to be terrible quality overall. Dunno.
Very nice, James. The sensitivity of the bearing balancer can be improved by embedding them in larger diameter wheels. The greater radius will lessen the effect of surface imperfections, as well as reduce the effective friction torque of the bearings. I once had a balancer that had the bearings in 3" dia. knife-edged steel wheels.
I didn't read the comments about the Knipex pliers on the last video, but I used to be very anti-adjustable-wrench and insisted on using the exact right size for everything. I got some of the Knipex plier wrench things at the recommendation of this channel and they're pretty much the only tool I use now. They just work great for pretty much everything. Maybe people complaining have used different types of pliers and the results were bad (the key point is that these pliers have parallel gripping surfaces), but these are great. You can get a lot of torque on the fastener and the jaws don't chew them up or anything. Would buy again.
The balance you optimized is single plane in the static condition. Additional improvement may be possible using 2 plane dynamic balance that measures the overturning moment generated by the rotating masses of the stone and mounting arbor system that has significant width with potential imbalance side to side that is not detectable in one plane in the static condition.
@@jefferywright4204 it was meant as a Joke (meme) as i have absolutely No clue what you're talking about due to me Not having an engineers Background. I'm a labo technician so all those physics related stuff is mistery to me
I used to static-balance conveyor pulleys every day, and the most accurate way, by far, is to balance on knife-edges... usually the client spec. Will have a torque rating, you use a torque wrench on the shaft and measure the torque it takes to make it move off it’s balanced position...
That was very interesting. Perhaps adding disks to the bearings to increase their diameter would increase the sensitivity but, either way seems to work well as they are. As others have said, it might be interesting to see what small weights added to a wheel would do might be able to see the sensitivity difference. Another great vid, thanks for sharing.
WOW! Night and day difference! I'm so glad you chose to chase that little extra balance. Really made a huge difference and gives me motivation to do the same.
When I did my fitter machinist training they always made us mount the wheel, rough balance, mount the wheel and dress it, then do a final balance. It seemed to work well but I felt like it was always more about the suitability for the wheel for the particular job rather than the last tenth of a gram of balance that made the difference.
Its kind of unnecessary balancing wheels this size. biggest problem is poor fitment on the arbor or operators not running the spindle long enough with the coolant off after grinding to allow the wheels to dry out
@@cooperised The difference in vibrations is really telling. And it would also tell if dressing the wheel would introduce any new problem with the balance. So I'd say that as long as the vibrations are absent or minimal you would not need to rebalance after dressing the wheel. It will be interesting to see if knocking the edge of the wheel will improve the surface even more or if he's reached the point of diminishing returns where the improvement is no longer significant enough to really make a noticeable difference.
@@blahorgaslisk7763 the only way to find out if rebalancing after dressing makes any difference is to do it, grind part of the surface and examine the results under at least 10x magnification. The difference may or may not be worth the extra effort, but at least you would make an informed decision.
It's 45 years since I used a surface grinder, but I think the one I used had some form of dynamic balance checker that you could use to manage vibrations caused by rocking imbalances that were not detectable on static balancers. We were told taught to dress a new wheel after an initial static balance, then dress it again and rebalance it. That grinder also had very nice air bearings. Once I get my new CNC machine installed, I need a grinder!
I'm no machinist, engineer or professional by any means. Just a tinkerer. But there is something, to me, that is so incredibly pleasing about using tools to make a tool that makes other tools work better.
Hi James, long time viewer here! What an improvement from the last time! Thank you for the content. i'd like to share an idea. As an electronic engineer, I couldn't help thinking that, you if want an objective measurement to compare both approaches, perhaps you could add an accelerometer to the system. You could mount the accelerometer to the surface grinder and set a baseline without the wheel, so you can characterize the spectrum of the machine itself, and the compare that against the measurent with the wheel installed. If you choose to do so, proper mounting makes a ton of a difference. I believe stud mount would be ideal, but I am not sure you'd like to punch a hole in your surface grinder. If you want to go stud mounted, perpendicularity, flatness and proper torque are the critical aspects. You can also go with adhesive mounting, where lower thickness is better, and hard adhesives are better than soft ones. Also, the placement is crucial, let me know if this whole thing makes sense to you, maybe we can discuss it, other people could also chime in and we can contribute to a plan before you go!
I use my Knipex parallel-jaw pliers when I don't want to mar the corners of flats on a bar on delicate parts. I keep the faces dressed and clean. Way better than average crescent wrenches/spanners when you can't use a high-end socket
A small high frequency vibrating motor mounted on the ball bearing balancing frame will help a lot. I think it will make it more accurate than the rail system. Between testings on the ball bearing system I would suggest spinning it to avoid the spindle sitting on the same location on the bearings. Edit: vibration will help overcome static friction
@@VladekR air jets is an interesting idea. I bet you could 3d print the whole thing including the air bushing and internal channels. Screw an air valve into the frame, plug in your air hose, and slowly open the valve until the shaft lifts up
balance the wheel, dress it, them balance it again and dress it one final time. The first balance will reduce the vibration and allow a better dressing of the wheel. The second balancing allows the reduction of any new vibrations from the dressed stone. The final dressing takes the newly rebalanced wheel to an even finer circular error. Imagine you are starting out with a hexagonal wheel. There will be minor differences on the flats which will cause slight vibrations. Dressing the wheel takes the corners off the hexagon but increases the vibration since the wheel was balanced for the imperfectly round wheel. Rebalancing for the round wheel will reduce the vibration but increase the out of roundness cause by the increase of vibrations. Redressing will remove the high spots and make the wheel even more round. Rinse and repeat until the wheel needs no adjustment.
I would like to give a tip on balancing with the three weights, or at least tell you how I do it. Moving them upwards, guessing the right position is is going to work well most of the time. But this way its hard to undo your last change if it was a bad one, or to determine if there is an error in the wheel, the fit on the arbor or the level of the bar or etc. I learned to start by looking for the high spot without the weights, mark it and put the first weight right at it. Then I use the internal beaks of the caliper (slider locked) in the groove pushed against the side of the locked weight to set the other two weights in the same distance to the first one at the high spot. They should be a little closer to each other than to the high spot. The rest is easy, high spot to the side and open or close the calipers a little to move the two weights a little in the same way, depending on which direction the wheel rolls of course. Sorry for the long text if this is nothing new, but since there is an automatic wheel balancer at my workshop, all this experience and practice is useless. Also totally not bragging about the wheel balancer.
Larger rollers with 1/16" flat, hardened & ground edges would be ideal, but hardened and tempered back to just barely machinable hardness would work, too. You don't want the thin edge too soft, as it will pick up damage too fast, and, the bigger the rollers, the less friction, gives the arbor better leverage against friction. It turns with less effort, making it more sensitive.
In R/c we often prefer to use magnetic levitation style balancers , the shaft has the end ground to sharp point and they float inside a magnetic disc with a small divot in it for the needle tips
Great results! The fit you get from your printer makes me envious. And if you continue to use the Knipex pliers I predict the following will happen: you'll get more comments about it. That's it.
I have used all 3 types and for quick accurate balancing the rocking beam style is best. My experience is that by also dressing the sides of the wheel and then rebalancing is good for surface finish.
I have a weird idea to greatly reduce the friction for your bearing balancer. You could use two strong lifting magnets on both sides of the shaft to reduce the force on the ceramic bearings. The magnets would be pulling the shaft from above, obviously without touching. I don't suspect any magnetization of the shaft would be an issue. But in theory, force resting on the bearings could be almost zero.
Knipex plier wrenches can deform the nut. Used the 180mm version to tighten an M8 stainless nut onto an M8 bolt ... wasn't able to get it back off again, took a closer look and realized i squezed it oval.
Is there a way to quantify the sensitivity? I guess it would have units of N*m? I guess on a balanced wheel, you could add x grams to the edge of the wheel at 90degrees. If the wheel rotates, reduce and try again, until it no longer detects a weight. That number in N*m would be its sensitivity.
That comment about watching the 3D printer print, for those who fall into that trance, the 3D printer type that casts the strongest spell seems to be a fast delta printer, followed by a dual extruder (Qidi iFast) doing a print with a lot of material changes (like a complex supported part) - something like a Bambu Labs would probably take it to a whole other level - _not that I personally would know anything about that_
If you don't want to deal with v groves and you're 3d printing the model you can model material like 55% of the diameter of the rod and then cut the rod out. Print it and then pop the rod right in. Works nicely.
Truly nice work!! Are you sure that the two rails are 100% parallel? Otherwise it might influence sensitivity? Maybe you glue them on, upside down on a surface plate. Or grind them down on the surface grinder (i did)
Not sure if this had been commented on but we were taught to always mount the wheel with the arrow or "balance "stamp at the top as that was the position that it was mounted at the factory when first dressed and sized . its amazing how much just a few thou clearance between the wheel arbor and the hole in the wheel as far as the balance
One thing to keep in mind James, Nylon is hygroscopic and with added fibres more so, It might be worth your time to keep a close eye on the dimensional stability of your assemblies as they age and take up moisture and move about. In a previous working life I was a technical injection moulder mostly setting and monitoring machines working Nylon with glass reinforcement. Now it maybe that printing does not induce as much pre stressing into the part as injection but, is much less homogeneous with more micro voids for moisture absorption. Anyway good work James and will you progress into iron versions? 🙂
The bearing balancer shouldn't really be that badly affected by something like this. But the rail balancer might. However, shouldn't the adjustment screws be able to make up for that shift in dimensions? I mean you have to readjust that rail balancer every time you use it anyway, right?
The one bad thing I see with the ceramic bearings balancer is the ceramic bearings. With them being open bearings, unless you are working in a clean room, they will get dust in them. I think accuracy would drop drastically with enough accumulation.
Aren't you worried about shop fire when vacuuming sparks? I pull all dust from my belt grinder and surface grinder through a water chamber/filter since I caught a fire when grinding titanium. The water filter is calibrated in such a way that almost no water leaks into my shop vac - the vac does not care about water but less water is nicer for cleanup.
Did you happen to check the parallelism of the tops of the two rods on the rod balancer after they were installed? If not, that might be a good thing to do to ensure a better tool. I would think that you could have some inaccuracy between the heights of the 3d printed towers which would cause parallelism problems between the two bars. It might be small, but would cause errors.
Came here to say exactly that. There is no way those two bars are perfectly level with each other. It would be enough for just a tiny speck of gust to fall on one end of V-grove and one end would be a tiny bit higher or lower than the other three. This could be easily measured with a height gauge, indicator on a stand and a granite surface. I am pretty sure James has all of those in his shop.
Glad someone pointed this out. Even if you somehow got it close to perfect during construction the PLA (and most other 3D thermplaatics) is hydroscopic and will shift dimensionally as it absorbs water. I don't think plastic is a good choice material for a rail balancer.
What an excellent video James! Your practical explanation of your method of designing in cad was so easy to follow. I've never had any experience of cad design at all, and you make it look simple. But I bet it isn't lol if I were to make a balancer, I'd go for the rail type because I believe the cost of the rod would be far less than the cost of those ceramic bearings, which I believe are very expensive. All in all the finish you have achieved is very good and it shows the necessity of getting the wheels finely balanced as possible, even on a brand new machine. Looking at your extraction system, I think you could improve it by printing a small scoop to go under the guard, which would influence the air flow. And make the scoop just above the wheel diameter, ( obviously you would have to allow enough for the dressing if the wheel and make it to the smallest diameter you would consider using after numerous re dressing or shaping the periphery)
Cool video. Be careful with the shop vac on a grinder. I got one to smolder doing this. If you use a surface with less contact are, IE: radiused or knife edges, on the outer races you'll likely get very similar performance to the bar balancer.
I had an idea for a high speed rotating assembly balancer but I haven't tried to make it yet. If the bearing was surrounded by rubber and was allowed to deflect while the assembly is spinning you should be able to detect the imbalance with a dial indicator sensor fed into an arduino. It would take a bit of programming but it's a solid idea.
Pro tip put the shaft in the wheel hub with the wheel on it and turn it vertical with the wider taper end of the shaft facing downward than let it fall down onto a solid wood base from 2 inches height and the taper will just lock into the hub by the force rising as the shaft is stopped by the supporting wood underneath. i do 10+kgs wheel balancing with the same locking methood. the hub should expand that few microns easily and the run out is naturally zeroing out by the hit. the wheel should not get any damage from this hit. to remove the shaft just let it fall in the opposite direction. never needed a locking balancing shaft in my life
For your specific arbor balance, you might want to make an add-on that holds the hex-driver's shaft in alignment with the weight's grub screws, then you can insert it through that hole, loosen, rotate the wheel with your hand to slide the weight, then turn the driver to lock it there, you'll pretty much always have to rotate the wheel anyways to get at them, so that could actually be how you more finely tweak positions without the leverage of the driver causing them to 'flick' like long tools tend to. For heat-set inserts, the thing I've heard is ~5-10 degrees hotter than you usually print that same material at.
Have you considered sharing the print files for others ? I watched the video thinking of having a minimal cost balancer. Then reading through the comments, buying a 3D printer for trials, CNC-ing a metal final construction and adding in some air bearings and economy went bye-bye. Excellent work up and trial testing.
People hating on the Knipex pliers wrenches here have clearly never used them; they're ideal for a use like this (among many others...) owing to the flat/parallel non-marring jaws and ability to grip well at a slight angle without risking slipping off. Definitely not worth the trouble for the rail balancer with the very tiny difference you saw, the ceramic bearings do the trick just fine, and are a lot less fiddly to set up. I am also fully unwilling to share the number of hours I have spent staring at my 3D printer while it operates when I should have been doing something more productive...
Too funny that the ppl in the comments are acting like you're using old Channel Lock pliers or something. 🤣🤣 I don't have any problem, they're smooth jaw parallel jawed pliers so by all means have at it, it's not going to hurt it.👌 I'm extremely surprised by the ceramic bearings, at first I thought maybe there might be an issue bc of the amount of surface area but they worked great!! If you could figure out a cost effective way to manufacture them, I'm sure you'd be able to sell quite a few of these. I know I'd buy one! Great video as always James, thank you for uploading. 👍👍
Nice process and really enjoy the extra info with using Fusion360, 3D printing and engineering components...as it reflects the real tasks in a project like this. I to was impressed with the 3D printing accuracy considering your comment about reducing the clearances you added to ensure fitment. I just wanted to confirm that you used Bambu labs own brand of HTN-CF. Was that the PAHT-CF they list?...and yes, I second or third the comments about getting your view on the bambu (no rhyme intended).I'm thinking about adding an extra 3D printer and am a Prusa fan/user already...but that Bambu features set for the price is becoming a real attractant. Thx
Just wondering if you had considered creating an air bearing for the balancer? I don’t know much about them, other than it’s my understanding that they are about as low friction as you are ever going to get! Seems like it might be an interesting project with some real technical challenge.
In theory, the pliers could somehow slip off and slightly round the nut, however the *entire point* of the knipex system is that they don't do that, so I put the nut rounding risk of knipex wrench pliers and a regular open wrench about the same, or even less risk depending on the tolerance of your wrenches.
My thought is that the bar style balancer has more work because you should probably level it each time you use it. And also I wonder if the bare shaft is an adequate way to balance it (I.e. there is going to be some friction even in that system and the shaft has to have enough weight to overcome it). On the bearing balancer, I wonder about build up of gunk over time in the bearings causing them to have more friction. Maybe I’m overthinking all of this though. Thanks for taking the time to make this video and share both approaches!
I don't know if you will make another video about wheel balancing, but if you want to quantify the difference in vibration balancing makes, you could try using a vibrometer app on your phone.
One thing I have always been curious about. Why are the bearings staggered on the balancer? Would they work as well if they were inline? And, based on a comment you made in the last video, would larger bearings work better? Would you also compare the ceramics to a steel 602 with all the grease clean out and some very light machine oil added? That is how we used to reduce friction in skate bearings for racing.
If the bearings are in-line, they will have to be further apart, and the shaft will sit lower between them, increasing the normal force on the bearings, hence rolling resistance.
Ex tool grinder here. Wanna know how we tightened them? These little t wrench thing and we'd smack the heck out of it and engage safety squints when turning it on ha. You'll be fine
Perhaps you could vibrate the setup gently to increase the sensitivity of the balancing. How important is the blotter/label concentricity? Wash the bearings with an ultrasonic wash to get rid of any grit or dust on the races/balls. By the way I think the bearing balancer should have mirrored sides and not rotated. I can't explain it but I feel that with the inner bearings on the same side and the outer bearings on the other it seems to be better 'centered' [balanced] than when the bearings are staggered which is the result from rotating the assembly around a central point as James did in Fusion360.
I've seen steel bearings totally destroyed by an ultrasonic cleaner. The balls rattle against the races and they come out pitted. I don't know if ceramic would survive, but I wouldn't recommend it.
For the knipex thingy - for me it's not that it will damage that much (you can if you don't look where you put them or put them just with a tad of the wrench touching. more like it's way harder to understand the forces going in to tightening it. being a bit awkward and as a whole using universal tool where you could just have 3d printer box or mount for the 2 dedicated wrenches that go on there nicely. End of the day we have engineered balancer even thou it worked with the el cheapo prop balancer and then we go on universal wrenching...it just does not match.
Now I’m no grinding expert, so much so that I wouldn’t even pretend to be in a YT comment section. As a matter of fact all I know is what Robin Renzetti has been kind enough to share (likely makes me more in-the-know than any “YT comment expert”). Is the mist coolant sufficient enough for surface grinding? I’ve only ever seen flood coolant. I could likely never afford one to begin with, but I’m just curious
I am mostly concerned about heat buildup in the part. I've had (especially thin) parts heat, bow, and burn in the wheel. I was planning on taking temperature readings before and after grinding, with the expectation that the temperature of the part would actually drop, but I messed up and forgot to measure afterward. The shiny parts distracted me.
Very nice. The ceramic bearings part used can be improved by using disc (carbide cutting) used in pipe cutters.(or something like that). I think I will reduce friction between the arbor and the flat bearings used. For the flat rod rail used in the second attempt, again instead of rod a triangular piece of HSS or such would be better, in my opinion. Good work. Lot to learn from you.
The problem with the Knipex pliers is obvious, I can't believe I'm typing this out. People will complain in the comments and then people will debate amongst themselves in the comments and the naysayers will check back in later to confirm they were right and it will drive channel engagement and be a funny joke for the fans. Wait, did I say problem? lol. Keep at it, I love to see the design process in play like this and especially the testing between the 2 types.
In my decades in the shop, one thing I've learned. There is no horse so dead that it can't stand one more beating. We look forward with anticipation the next balancer video.
Neigh 🐴
Hello. im currently an apprientice in machining in Germany. I think i have a solution to your problem. Our most recent toppic was: Cooling solutions. Especialy Mistcooling. We could proof, that while cutting with "an undefined cutting geometry" (Grinding, honing and lapping) mistcooling worsens the surface quality. Floodcooling or dry Air resulted in the best surfaces. The Grindingwheel nooks and holes get "Sticky" from mistcoolant and the super fine metal partikles gets stuck in there. but only the super super fine ones. You can only realy seee them in a microscope. Aditional do NEVER NEVER EVER start your wet-cooling with a stationary grindingwheel. The wheel is pourus like a sponge, coolant seeps (if stationary) on one side in, and throws your perfect balance WAY of. In Germany we (of course) have laws of safety for machinists, and one of it is: Cooling only AFTER spinning. Please be prepared, if you try to aircool your grinder, it can create a fire hazard
Thank you for sharing. I use a surface grinder quite often at work but wasn't taught this by the old boy due to retire. I also use centerless grinders but the coolant is never switched off during the day possibly for the same reason.
I have to say that you’re really pretty adept with 3D printing.
The bad thing about using the Knipex pliers (I use them too for things I “shouldn’t”) is that you’ll get complaints about your using them.
One tip for final balancing, if you give the wheel a little bit of starting motion and watch where it settles each time starting in different positions this can help reduce the influence of starting static friction. This can also help identify if there is an issue in your adjustment of level, or bend in the rails of your balancer.
I think that would be interesting to experiment with, but I would want a better quality arbor than this abomination from Tormach. The tool marks in the shaft are probably the biggest source of error at the moment. It's too long to grind in my lectric centers, unfortunately. I could buy the Sopko shaft, but it's over $400, so unless I start getting issues in the grind I can't overcome, I think this is close enough. Don't tell Robin Renzetti I said that. :)
@@Clough42 How about just chuck up the arbor in a length and hit it with fine sandpaper.
@@Clough42 I'd say, if you're in a making mood, you could probably turn a shaft yourself with a nice toolpost grinder, depending on just how long a shaft you need. especially because grinding is a very low tool pressure operation when you're pretty much sparking a surface perfect
@@Clough42 As an owner of a Tormach 1100 your comment made me burst out laughing. "This abomination from Tormach". 🤣🤣🤣
Completely agree, I use the Dubro balancer like that, it really shows you the last bit of inbalance
You knew before you made the first video that you are not going to buy a expensive balancer!
3D printing is something else!!!
Watching your 3D printed parts materialize; we TOTALLY _never_ do that. 3D printers are the new pen plotters. We never watched those either because we were always all yelled at to go back to our desks and get back to work.
Wish 3D printers could pull the G forces of a plotter.
ROFL!
Yea I remember the first time I set up a plotter, sent it a text file to print out and watched it meticulously as it drew out the text. Yea, I just might have spent an hour or so staring at that thing...
The funny thing is it was working with 7-bit ASCII and 7-bit serial communication. 7-bits, one stop bit, one parity. X-On / X-Off handshake. So making it print correctly was an interesting exercise. I think I had worked at the company about two weeks at the time, and I had never worked with serial protocols before. So I was dropped off in the deep end with a set of manuals and told to get it working...
Edit: You know what else I've spent way to much time of my life staring at? Defragmentation utilities. Especially those that would color code files so you would see just how they were shuffled around to make space to write them into contiguous blocks. There was something hypnotical about seeing all this data being moved about. And I know I wasn't the only one hypnotized into staring slack jawed as the computer created order out of chaos on the HDD...
When WinXP did away with the graphic representation of the process I was both relieved that I no longer would risk staring at it for hours on end, and so irritated at my guilty pleasure being denied me.
@@Bob_Adkinsyou have no idea what they are capable of if you don't think they can.
Using the Knipex pliers to take off the nuts of the wheel is perfectly fine! Since they have parallel jaws that tighten the more you grip on a fastener they are better that wrenches for this task. I used them on aircraft hydraulic “B” nuts since any damage to the nut would require the complete replacement of the line as well as the nut..
That’s exactly the task for which I bought my first Knipex pliers some years ago (retired A&P). 👍
If you are correct then there’s no need for sized wrenches or sockets.
I'm not a grinder and never used that. But I was surprised when after you balanced that wheel so nicely, you dressed the wheel, and didn't balance again. My thinking is that you balanced "elliptical" wheel. But now that you've dressed it, you removed that weight from the extra material that you've dressed out.
It would have been really interesting to put the wheel back on the balancer to see the effect of the dressing on the balance.
Also would have been super interesting to see the difference, if any, of the grind surface quality between your last result and the result of re-balancing the wheel after the dressing.
Great! As a mechanical engineer, I really enjoy seeing your approaches to mechanical design with these types of projects and walkthroughs. One of the many reasons you have one of my favorite channels. Congrats on 100k recently too 👏
I just got an X1 Carbon and I definitely sit and watch it. Sometimes I sit next to the printer and watch the print on the video feed in the app because I’m insane.
Really nice balancers, now that you know they work you can make them out of metal. I think that horse still has a pulse.
I recently just bought my first surface grinder, an older Manual 618 Okamoto. Currently trying to tool it up for everything I have planned for it. Bc of the limited space a my home shop I was able to convince my boss at my day job to let me install the machine up there, which was super cool on his part, but it is def having an effect on the time its taking for getting everything set up and operational in the way I want by not having it at my disposal 24/7. A couple of day ago though, I finished all the CAD work and literally just ordered the materials I'll need (I'm a "if it's made from metal, it will be better or at least stronger" kinda guy, regardless of alloy chosen) to make my own wheel balancer based off of the Tormach-style design (but using low carbon steel for the body rather than cast iron). Still contemplating whether I want to weld the body/base of the balancer together or just use fasteners for that, either way, it's pretty ironic to see you putting out videos right now for a similar project. Cool stuff man. Appreciate getting to learn from your efforts for my own stuff.
Great Video. Please take some care with the sparks entering the dust bag of the ShopVac. Any spark in the dust may cause a smolder and ignite sometime later when youre away from the shop. You would, of course, have a couple of smoke detectors in the shop but just a safety tip. cheers from NZ
@clough42 Good point - the same would apply to the vac hose where they are hottest and can build up, so make sure it is capable of reasonable temps, whatever that is....
With the shield you could lower it down to just clearing the part so about 10mm or so it looks like - then would would catch even more, or a flexible extension?.
Finally you say you put the diamond behind centre so if it catches it will push out of the way. It will if it SLIDES but if it TIPS then not so much. If you wanted to ensure that wasn't to occur then the diamond should be past the rear of the holder so that it pivots away. The I would think it was best to have the folder shaped or sized so it will hit the wheel rather than be grabbed by it.
Finally AWESOME video amongst a never ending stream of AWESOME videos. Wish I could use Fusion360 as well as you.
G'day from Aus - us neighbours have to stick together :)
Hi James. My experiments with this same thing ended up with large, skinny brass wheels (85 mm dia, 2.5 mm thick), with tiny bearings from hard drives press fit into their centres. The bearings had their grease covers removed, and they were then flushed out with acetone, then alcohol, and air-hose dried. The wheels have a blunt knife edge (like a butter knife). This all resulted in extrememly low friction and inertia, which worked well for me. The wheels can also be weight relieved on the lathe if required, which will help for inertia. Thumbs up!
Did you use brass just for ease of machining? Seems like a harder material (or at least a harder rim) would be preferred.
Great idea for the bearings! I was envisaging a similar setup using small ball bearings for model RC cars which are quite inexpensive but ones from a hard drive will be in a different league in terms of precision and overall quality.
@@ferrumignis Yes, and its all I had. But since this is such a low dynamics application, it really does not matter. Aluminium wuold have been fine as well, I guess, but not wood, for example.
@@ferrumignis And yes, those HD bearings are amazing. I used high quality Hitachi drives' bearings. Others may vary, such as Seagate, which I find to be terrible quality overall. Dunno.
Very nice, James.
The sensitivity of the bearing balancer can be improved by embedding them in larger diameter wheels.
The greater radius will lessen the effect of surface imperfections, as well as reduce the effective friction torque of the bearings.
I once had a balancer that had the bearings in 3" dia. knife-edged steel wheels.
I didn't read the comments about the Knipex pliers on the last video, but I used to be very anti-adjustable-wrench and insisted on using the exact right size for everything. I got some of the Knipex plier wrench things at the recommendation of this channel and they're pretty much the only tool I use now. They just work great for pretty much everything. Maybe people complaining have used different types of pliers and the results were bad (the key point is that these pliers have parallel gripping surfaces), but these are great. You can get a lot of torque on the fastener and the jaws don't chew them up or anything. Would buy again.
Gee, now all you need is an air bearing balancer and a magnetic levitation balancer! 🙂
Oh heck now I have to make both just because....
Forbidden Life Saver Candies
Very crunchy.
The balance you optimized is single plane in the static condition. Additional improvement may be possible using 2 plane dynamic balance that measures the overturning moment generated by the rotating masses of the stone and mounting arbor system that has significant width with potential imbalance side to side that is not detectable in one plane in the static condition.
I like your funny words, magic man
@@Humbulla93 Which words and why?
@@jefferywright4204 it was meant as a Joke (meme) as i have absolutely No clue what you're talking about due to me Not having an engineers Background. I'm a labo technician so all those physics related stuff is mistery to me
I used to static-balance conveyor pulleys every day, and the most accurate way, by far, is to balance on knife-edges... usually the client spec. Will have a torque rating, you use a torque wrench on the shaft and measure the torque it takes to make it move off it’s balanced position...
That was very interesting.
Perhaps adding disks to the bearings to increase their diameter would increase the sensitivity but, either way seems to work well as they are.
As others have said, it might be interesting to see what small weights added to a wheel would do might be able to see the sensitivity difference.
Another great vid, thanks for sharing.
WOW! Night and day difference! I'm so glad you chose to chase that little extra balance. Really made a huge difference and gives me motivation to do the same.
As an electrician I know of nothing more "permanent" than a temporary solution that works.
or duct tape 🙂
When I did my fitter machinist training they always made us mount the wheel, rough balance, mount the wheel and dress it, then do a final balance. It seemed to work well but I felt like it was always more about the suitability for the wheel for the particular job rather than the last tenth of a gram of balance that made the difference.
Its kind of unnecessary balancing wheels this size. biggest problem is poor fitment on the arbor or operators not running the spindle long enough with the coolant off after grinding to allow the wheels to dry out
@Chris North unnecessary is Mr cloughs middle name haha
@@chrisnorth3458 And yet balancing this wheel better clearly helped...
@@cooperised The difference in vibrations is really telling. And it would also tell if dressing the wheel would introduce any new problem with the balance. So I'd say that as long as the vibrations are absent or minimal you would not need to rebalance after dressing the wheel.
It will be interesting to see if knocking the edge of the wheel will improve the surface even more or if he's reached the point of diminishing returns where the improvement is no longer significant enough to really make a noticeable difference.
@@blahorgaslisk7763 the only way to find out if rebalancing after dressing makes any difference is to do it, grind part of the surface and examine the results under at least 10x magnification.
The difference may or may not be worth the extra effort, but at least you would make an informed decision.
You have become my favorite maker/ machinist on the RUclipss. Thanks for your great content and your thoughtful designs.
It's 45 years since I used a surface grinder, but I think the one I used had some form of dynamic balance checker that you could use to manage vibrations caused by rocking imbalances that were not detectable on static balancers. We were told taught to dress a new wheel after an initial static balance, then dress it again and rebalance it. That grinder also had very nice air bearings. Once I get my new CNC machine installed, I need a grinder!
I'm no machinist, engineer or professional by any means. Just a tinkerer. But there is something, to me, that is so incredibly pleasing about using tools to make a tool that makes other tools work better.
Hi James, long time viewer here! What an improvement from the last time! Thank you for the content. i'd like to share an idea.
As an electronic engineer, I couldn't help thinking that, you if want an objective measurement to compare both approaches, perhaps you could add an accelerometer to the system. You could mount the accelerometer to the surface grinder and set a baseline without the wheel, so you can characterize the spectrum of the machine itself, and the compare that against the measurent with the wheel installed.
If you choose to do so, proper mounting makes a ton of a difference. I believe stud mount would be ideal, but I am not sure you'd like to punch a hole in your surface grinder. If you want to go stud mounted, perpendicularity, flatness and proper torque are the critical aspects. You can also go with adhesive mounting, where lower thickness is better, and hard adhesives are better than soft ones.
Also, the placement is crucial, let me know if this whole thing makes sense to you, maybe we can discuss it, other people could also chime in and we can contribute to a plan before you go!
Could also use accelerometer with some position sensor to balance it in place
Maybe 3d print some caps for the new bearing balancer to keep dust out of those bearings while it's not in use?
Oh, that's not a bad idea.
I use my Knipex parallel-jaw pliers when I don't want to mar the corners of flats on a bar on delicate parts. I keep the faces dressed and clean. Way better than average crescent wrenches/spanners when you can't use a high-end socket
A small high frequency vibrating motor mounted on the ball bearing balancing frame will help a lot. I think it will make it more accurate than the rail system. Between testings on the ball bearing system I would suggest spinning it to avoid the spindle sitting on the same location on the bearings.
Edit: vibration will help overcome static friction
Magnetic or air jets levitation?
@@VladekR air jets is an interesting idea. I bet you could 3d print the whole thing including the air bushing and internal channels. Screw an air valve into the frame, plug in your air hose, and slowly open the valve until the shaft lifts up
Nice project. I enjoyed the F360 tutorial…
Me too, as a relatively new user of F360 I really appreciate an overview of the steps used to create parts.
What a difference! And a relatively simple solution.
balance the wheel, dress it, them balance it again and dress it one final time. The first balance will reduce the vibration and allow a better dressing of the wheel. The second balancing allows the reduction of any new vibrations from the dressed stone. The final dressing takes the newly rebalanced wheel to an even finer circular error. Imagine you are starting out with a hexagonal wheel. There will be minor differences on the flats which will cause slight vibrations. Dressing the wheel takes the corners off the hexagon but increases the vibration since the wheel was balanced for the imperfectly round wheel. Rebalancing for the round wheel will reduce the vibration but increase the out of roundness cause by the increase of vibrations. Redressing will remove the high spots and make the wheel even more round. Rinse and repeat until the wheel needs no adjustment.
I would like to give a tip on balancing with the three weights, or at least tell you how I do it. Moving them upwards, guessing the right position is is going to work well most of the time. But this way its hard to undo your last change if it was a bad one, or to determine if there is an error in the wheel, the fit on the arbor or the level of the bar or etc.
I learned to start by looking for the high spot without the weights, mark it and put the first weight right at it. Then I use the internal beaks of the caliper (slider locked) in the groove pushed against the side of the locked weight to set the other two weights in the same distance to the first one at the high spot. They should be a little closer to each other than to the high spot. The rest is easy, high spot to the side and open or close the calipers a little to move the two weights a little in the same way, depending on which direction the wheel rolls of course.
Sorry for the long text if this is nothing new, but since there is an automatic wheel balancer at my workshop, all this experience and practice is useless. Also totally not bragging about the wheel balancer.
Larger rollers with 1/16" flat, hardened & ground edges would be ideal, but hardened and tempered back to just barely machinable hardness would work, too. You don't want the thin edge too soft, as it will pick up damage too fast, and, the bigger the rollers, the less friction, gives the arbor better leverage against friction. It turns with less effort, making it more sensitive.
In R/c we often prefer to use magnetic levitation style balancers , the shaft has the end ground to sharp point and they float inside a magnetic disc with a small divot in it for the needle tips
Great results! The fit you get from your printer makes me envious. And if you continue to use the Knipex pliers I predict the following will happen: you'll get more comments about it. That's it.
nice pair of balancers.. I really like the finish on the ceramic bearing one
Loved the build James. You’ve had a surface grinder for a very short time and your grinding results are amazing. Very inspiring.
I have used all 3 types and for quick accurate balancing the rocking beam style is best.
My experience is that by also dressing the sides of the wheel and then rebalancing is good for surface finish.
I have a weird idea to greatly reduce the friction for your bearing balancer. You could use two strong lifting magnets on both sides of the shaft to reduce the force on the ceramic bearings. The magnets would be pulling the shaft from above, obviously without touching. I don't suspect any magnetization of the shaft would be an issue. But in theory, force resting on the bearings could be almost zero.
Knipex plier wrenches can deform the nut. Used the 180mm version to tighten an M8 stainless nut onto an M8 bolt ... wasn't able to get it back off again, took a closer look and realized i squezed it oval.
James, I'm quite amazed that the balancer could detect the weight of the blue ink that was used to draw the arrow. ;-)
Well use the bearing for adjusting and the straight bar for sanity checking
Is there a way to quantify the sensitivity? I guess it would have units of N*m? I guess on a balanced wheel, you could add x grams to the edge of the wheel at 90degrees. If the wheel rotates, reduce and try again, until it no longer detects a weight. That number in N*m would be its sensitivity.
Really enjoyed the comparison. Thanks for sharing the adventure!
That comment about watching the 3D printer print, for those who fall into that trance, the 3D printer type that casts the strongest spell seems to be a fast delta printer, followed by a dual extruder (Qidi iFast) doing a print with a lot of material changes (like a complex supported part) - something like a Bambu Labs would probably take it to a whole other level - _not that I personally would know anything about that_
I think that I would combine both of them. Basically start with the rail balancer and add the roller style to one end.
That's a really interesting idea. I didn't think of that.
Outstanding work. My 3D Printer is now my favorite tool of all time. Nice to see you using it.
I like the one with bearings! Looks super cool
I do, too. It was really fun to make.
@@Clough42 I'm super impressed with the dimensional precision you achived with the X1.
I gotta have one! Beautiful bearing model.
If you don't want to deal with v groves and you're 3d printing the model you can model material like 55% of the diameter of the rod and then cut the rod out. Print it and then pop the rod right in. Works nicely.
Oh, that's a cool idea.
Truly nice work!!
Are you sure that the two rails are 100% parallel? Otherwise it might influence sensitivity?
Maybe you glue them on, upside down on a surface plate.
Or grind them down on the surface grinder (i did)
Not sure if this had been commented on but we were taught to always mount the wheel with the arrow or "balance "stamp at the top as that was the position that it was mounted at the factory when first dressed and sized . its amazing how much just a few thou clearance between the wheel arbor and the hole in the wheel as far as the balance
Nicely done - that CF filament looks great with the stainless hardware
I agree. I went to my industrial hardware supplier and sourced stainless specifically for that reason.
Nice. Suggest you print a cover for the bearing balancer to keep dust out when not in use.
One thing to keep in mind James, Nylon is hygroscopic and with added fibres more so, It might be worth your time to keep a close eye on the dimensional stability of your assemblies as they age and take up moisture and move about.
In a previous working life I was a technical injection moulder mostly setting and monitoring machines working Nylon with glass reinforcement. Now it maybe that printing does not induce as much pre stressing into the part as injection but, is much less homogeneous with more micro voids for moisture absorption. Anyway good work James and will you progress into iron versions? 🙂
The majority of 3D printing polymers are hygroscopic.
The bearing balancer shouldn't really be that badly affected by something like this. But the rail balancer might. However, shouldn't the adjustment screws be able to make up for that shift in dimensions? I mean you have to readjust that rail balancer every time you use it anyway, right?
@@blahorgaslisk7763 The screws don't help if the rails don't remain parallel in the Z axis.
Your channel is simply RUclips Gold - thank you!
Watching 3D printing is the modern equivalent of watching disk defrag, I guess ;)
The one bad thing I see with the ceramic bearings balancer is the ceramic bearings. With them being open bearings, unless you are working in a clean room, they will get dust in them. I think accuracy would drop drastically with enough accumulation.
I enjoy watching your videos. James, just keep going on your new videos.
Aren't you worried about shop fire when vacuuming sparks? I pull all dust from my belt grinder and surface grinder through a water chamber/filter since I caught a fire when grinding titanium. The water filter is calibrated in such a way that almost no water leaks into my shop vac - the vac does not care about water but less water is nicer for cleanup.
We are getting more and more precision in 3D printing
Beautiful! You make it look easy.
Did you happen to check the parallelism of the tops of the two rods on the rod balancer after they were installed? If not, that might be a good thing to do to ensure a better tool. I would think that you could have some inaccuracy between the heights of the 3d printed towers which would cause parallelism problems between the two bars. It might be small, but would cause errors.
Came here to say exactly that. There is no way those two bars are perfectly level with each other. It would be enough for just a tiny speck of gust to fall on one end of V-grove and one end would be a tiny bit higher or lower than the other three. This could be easily measured with a height gauge, indicator on a stand and a granite surface. I am pretty sure James has all of those in his shop.
Glad someone pointed this out. Even if you somehow got it close to perfect during construction the PLA (and most other 3D thermplaatics) is hydroscopic and will shift dimensionally as it absorbs water. I don't think plastic is a good choice material for a rail balancer.
What an excellent video James! Your practical explanation of your method of designing in cad was so easy to follow. I've never had any experience of cad design at all, and you make it look simple. But I bet it isn't lol if I were to make a balancer, I'd go for the rail type because I believe the cost of the rod would be far less than the cost of those ceramic bearings, which I believe are very expensive. All in all the finish you have achieved is very good and it shows the necessity of getting the wheels finely balanced as possible, even on a brand new machine. Looking at your extraction system, I think you could improve it by printing a small scoop to go under the guard, which would influence the air flow. And make the scoop just above the wheel diameter, ( obviously you would have to allow enough for the dressing if the wheel and make it to the smallest diameter you would consider using after numerous re dressing or shaping the periphery)
Great video James. Looking forward to the review on Bambu 3d printer.
huge improvement
Cool video. Be careful with the shop vac on a grinder. I got one to smolder doing this.
If you use a surface with less contact are, IE: radiused or knife edges, on the outer races you'll likely get very similar performance to the bar balancer.
I had an idea for a high speed rotating assembly balancer but I haven't tried to make it yet. If the bearing was surrounded by rubber and was allowed to deflect while the assembly is spinning you should be able to detect the imbalance with a dial indicator sensor fed into an arduino. It would take a bit of programming but it's a solid idea.
Pro tip put the shaft in the wheel hub with the wheel on it and turn it vertical with the wider taper end of the shaft facing downward than let it fall down onto a solid wood base from 2 inches height and the taper will just lock into the hub by the force rising as the shaft is stopped by the supporting wood underneath. i do 10+kgs wheel balancing with the same locking methood. the hub should expand that few microns easily and the run out is naturally zeroing out by the hit. the wheel should not get any damage from this hit. to remove the shaft just let it fall in the opposite direction. never needed a locking balancing shaft in my life
Nice grind James and you will not damage anything with the Knipex pilers as I have the same and the parallel jaws are the dux guts.
For your specific arbor balance, you might want to make an add-on that holds the hex-driver's shaft in alignment with the weight's grub screws, then you can insert it through that hole, loosen, rotate the wheel with your hand to slide the weight, then turn the driver to lock it there, you'll pretty much always have to rotate the wheel anyways to get at them, so that could actually be how you more finely tweak positions without the leverage of the driver causing them to 'flick' like long tools tend to.
For heat-set inserts, the thing I've heard is ~5-10 degrees hotter than you usually print that same material at.
Have you considered sharing the print files for others ? I watched the video thinking of having a minimal cost balancer. Then reading through the comments, buying a 3D printer for trials, CNC-ing a metal final construction and adding in some air bearings and economy went bye-bye. Excellent work up and trial testing.
People hating on the Knipex pliers wrenches here have clearly never used them; they're ideal for a use like this (among many others...) owing to the flat/parallel non-marring jaws and ability to grip well at a slight angle without risking slipping off.
Definitely not worth the trouble for the rail balancer with the very tiny difference you saw, the ceramic bearings do the trick just fine, and are a lot less fiddly to set up.
I am also fully unwilling to share the number of hours I have spent staring at my 3D printer while it operates when I should have been doing something more productive...
Oh.. that's what insert mcmaster carr does.... that's useful af.
use the seramic berings but put a masive wheel on them for more leverage against the brings
knipex pliers are awesome
Too funny that the ppl in the comments are acting like you're using old Channel Lock pliers or something. 🤣🤣
I don't have any problem, they're smooth jaw parallel jawed pliers so by all means have at it, it's not going to hurt it.👌
I'm extremely surprised by the ceramic bearings, at first I thought maybe there might be an issue bc of the amount of surface area but they worked great!! If you could figure out a cost effective way to manufacture them, I'm sure you'd be able to sell quite a few of these. I know I'd buy one! Great video as always James, thank you for uploading. 👍👍
I think some viewers are upset by the knipex pliers as there are not aware of the parallel action one u r using. I love these pliers!!!
As just a thought, you may want to add a method for leveling the fixture with the bearings. Any twist could influence the balance. But a nice designs.
Another great video. Thanks from Australia!
Grinds my gears seeing non constrained cad in vids, glad to see you fully constrain sketches 😅
I do my best. Choosing the right things to constrain and the right things to dimension is an art form.
Nice process and really enjoy the extra info with using Fusion360, 3D printing and engineering components...as it reflects the real tasks in a project like this. I to was impressed with the 3D printing accuracy considering your comment about reducing the clearances you added to ensure fitment. I just wanted to confirm that you used Bambu labs own brand of HTN-CF. Was that the PAHT-CF they list?...and yes, I second or third the comments about getting your view on the bambu (no rhyme intended).I'm thinking about adding an extra 3D printer and am a Prusa fan/user already...but that Bambu features set for the price is becoming a real attractant. Thx
Just wondering if you had considered creating an air bearing for the balancer? I don’t know much about them, other than it’s my understanding that they are about as low friction as you are ever going to get! Seems like it might be an interesting project with some real technical challenge.
In theory, the pliers could somehow slip off and slightly round the nut, however the *entire point* of the knipex system is that they don't do that, so I put the nut rounding risk of knipex wrench pliers and a regular open wrench about the same, or even less risk depending on the tolerance of your wrenches.
Great episode that demonstrated total ownage of engineering, physics, materials, and cantankerous commenters!
My thought is that the bar style balancer has more work because you should probably level it each time you use it. And also I wonder if the bare shaft is an adequate way to balance it (I.e. there is going to be some friction even in that system and the shaft has to have enough weight to overcome it). On the bearing balancer, I wonder about build up of gunk over time in the bearings causing them to have more friction. Maybe I’m overthinking all of this though. Thanks for taking the time to make this video and share both approaches!
I don't know if you will make another video about wheel balancing, but if you want to quantify the difference in vibration balancing makes, you could try using a vibrometer app on your phone.
One thing I have always been curious about. Why are the bearings staggered on the balancer? Would they work as well if they were inline? And, based on a comment you made in the last video, would larger bearings work better? Would you also compare the ceramics to a steel 602 with all the grease clean out and some very light machine oil added? That is how we used to reduce friction in skate bearings for racing.
If the bearings are in-line, they will have to be further apart, and the shaft will sit lower between them, increasing the normal force on the bearings, hence rolling resistance.
Thanks for sharing .... Stay Safe and Well ...
Ex tool grinder here. Wanna know how we tightened them? These little t wrench thing and we'd smack the heck out of it and engage safety squints when turning it on ha. You'll be fine
Perhaps you could vibrate the setup gently to increase the sensitivity of the balancing.
How important is the blotter/label concentricity?
Wash the bearings with an ultrasonic wash to get rid of any grit or dust on the races/balls.
By the way I think the bearing balancer should have mirrored sides and not rotated. I can't explain it but I feel that with the inner bearings on the same side and the outer bearings on the other it seems to be better 'centered' [balanced] than when the bearings are staggered which is the result from rotating the assembly around a central point as James did in Fusion360.
I've seen steel bearings totally destroyed by an ultrasonic cleaner. The balls rattle against the races and they come out pitted. I don't know if ceramic would survive, but I wouldn't recommend it.
For the knipex thingy - for me it's not that it will damage that much (you can if you don't look where you put them or put them just with a tad of the wrench touching. more like it's way harder to understand the forces going in to tightening it. being a bit awkward and as a whole using universal tool where you could just have 3d printer box or mount for the 2 dedicated wrenches that go on there nicely. End of the day we have engineered balancer even thou it worked with the el cheapo prop balancer and then we go on universal wrenching...it just does not match.
Now I’m no grinding expert, so much so that I wouldn’t even pretend to be in a YT comment section. As a matter of fact all I know is what Robin Renzetti has been kind enough to share (likely makes me more in-the-know than any “YT comment expert”). Is the mist coolant sufficient enough for surface grinding? I’ve only ever seen flood coolant. I could likely never afford one to begin with, but I’m just curious
well my understanding is that since the parts he is grinding are small it is fine. he did a video on installing it.
I am mostly concerned about heat buildup in the part. I've had (especially thin) parts heat, bow, and burn in the wheel. I was planning on taking temperature readings before and after grinding, with the expectation that the temperature of the part would actually drop, but I messed up and forgot to measure afterward. The shiny parts distracted me.
Very nice.
The ceramic bearings part used can be improved by using disc (carbide cutting) used in pipe cutters.(or something like that). I think I will reduce friction between the arbor and the flat bearings used.
For the flat rod rail used in the second attempt, again instead of rod a triangular piece of HSS or such would be better, in my opinion. Good work. Lot to learn from you.
This is exactly what I wanted to see after watching the last video.
The problem with the Knipex pliers is obvious, I can't believe I'm typing this out. People will complain in the comments and then people will debate amongst themselves in the comments and the naysayers will check back in later to confirm they were right and it will drive channel engagement and be a funny joke for the fans. Wait, did I say problem? lol. Keep at it, I love to see the design process in play like this and especially the testing between the 2 types.
gorgeous!
You should also true the wheel sideways. Results also seem to improve
Maybe a larger bearing diameter to the shaft diameter to reduce friction? maybe something like a bearing OD of 3-5 times the shaft diameter?