Drum Sander Improvement

I picked one of the old Ryobi WDS 1600 drum sanders recently.

Ryobi stopped making them quite awhile ago, but the design is very similar to the Performax or Jet.

It was easy to see it hadn't had much use, and after talking to the previous owner I found out why.

He said when he first bought it, he had someone come by and help him set it up and install the sandpaper on it.

After the sandpaper wore out, he tried to replace the sandpaper, but he couldn't figure out how to do it. He ended up trying to glue sandpaper to the roller, but that didn't work either .

So the drum sander just set where it was at in his basement. He was in the process of moving to another house, so he put the sander up for sale .




I got to looking at the sander and I could see why he had difficulty. There is a clip on the inboard side of the drum that is really hard to get to, especially if you are trying to retract the clip, hold the drum in place, and tuck the end of the sandpaper strip into the clip at the same time.

You need at least three hands - bad design.



I made up a third-hand gizmo that mounts using the existing hardware. It's nothing fancy, just a spring loaded bolt that extends out to catch the drum's sandpaper latching clip and holds it in place while I tuck the end of the sandpaper into the clip. Once the sandpaper is in place, a slight roll of the drum releases the bolt and it automatically retracts itself out of the way.

Works good .


This is the sander as is, in it's poorly engineered glory -







Here is a pic of the spring gizmo -







Here is a pic of the gizmo installed on the sander -








And here is a pic of the gizmo doing it's job, holding the clip in the retracted position -








And released once again -







I'm ready to install some sandpaper and put this drum sander to work now .


.

 

I've already got my eye on an alternative conveyor belt .

The one on there now (the original) is still in surprisingly good shape - nice and flexible, no tears.

I think that I'll try to preserve the belt by using a carrier board to run my pieces through. That way I can have full bearing on the belt.; maybe less chance of smaller pieces getting hung up and digging in. I'll have to see how it goes.

Parts availability is pretty sparse, but that doesn't concern me at all. If something breaks or dies, I can either fix it or fabricate a new part.

The main thing for me was to get a machine that had all the parts to start out with .

The Ryobi design is the same as all the others - no big differences.

.



I wanted to buy a new

 

I've been looking for one for several years, Colt .

It's the one specialized tool that can do a specific job (hopefully) that I really wanted.

I'm usually pretty good at fabricating stuff, but I thought if I could just get the major components for a drum sander, I'd be a lot further ahead, rather than piecing one together.

What I really wanted was to buy a new SuperMax 16-32, but that just seems like a lot of money to me for a tool that only has one basic purpose. But, it's just the way it is. It is what it is .

For right now, I've latched on to this Ryobi for at least $1,000 bucks less than what I'd have to cough-up for a SuperMax, plus it came with a half-way decent rolling stand and 3 boxes (12 pieces) of SuperMax abrasive wraps.

And, the guy delivered it to my house.

Like a lot of my stuff, I found it on CraigsList.

Brand-new stuff is really nice, but used and well-cared for is OK for me .

.

 

Yeah! It's just like a store bought one; something unusual in my shop Dave !!!

I'm planning on using a carrier board to transport my pieces through on.

I'm hoping that will help to even out the load and give more consistent results.

Either it'll go, or it'll blow .


edit: Us tool junkies have GAS problems too .

.