My old 16” powermatic planer (pre 1960) has a problem. The shaft that drives the set works belts resides at the base of the tool and is a 1” shaft, drive pulleys on each end and totaly worn out babbit bearings as it’s only support. The bearing supports are one piece cast iron and bolt to the inside of the base. The one piece design defies the repour of the babbit by any process I’ve seen, not to mention how you would cut the oil channels. I’m thinking about making a couple new brackets and adding new pillow blocks in place of the old babbit bearings. Looks like it would be pretty straight forward as long as the pillow blocks will reasonably slide onto the old shaft. Anybody with experience here or other ideas? Thank you in advance.
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Replies
Mcmaster Carr is all you need. They'll have everything you need or really can imagine. Then just remove what's there and replace with new better, extraordinary, etc....
Rob Kress
http://www.mcmaster.com/#
Using pillow block bearings as you propose would do except that without seeing the thing I can't vouch for the ease of fixing them to the machine. Possibly flange bearings would be easier to attach.If you can show a picture it would be helpful.
If you have a metal work lathe then turning and fitting bronze bushes would be cheaper, at least in my case.
I agree with Philip about the flange bearings if you have room to fit them. Can you give us a model #? I might be able to pull an exploded view from the archives.
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Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.~ Denis Diderot
I apologize for not having pics, I'm not too handy with all this jpg stuff. The machine has no placard with any model or serial number which I gather is pretty common for the CE16,CD16,or CS16. I have seen a couple of planers nearly if not identical over the years. The powermatic website offers no help on anything not currently made, but I guess that is the current business model. Please note my comments on flange bearings in my last post. These are the types of suggestions I'm fishing for, has someone else done this, are there better ways, or am I missing something? Thanks to all..
I went ahead and fixed the problem. Fabricated a couple bearing supports to utilze the existing holes and mounted new pillow blocks on them. Took most of a day but was pretty easy work. The old unit is much quieter now and if it lasts 12 as long as the old babbit setup did I won't be around to figure out the next fix..
Pulley Removal
I notice you replaced the bearings in your old powermatic. I realize this thread is very old, but I just acquired an old Powermatic CD16. The same bearings are bad. I figure I can fix them by welding Flange bearings to the machine, but how did you remove the pulleys? Any help would be much appreciated.
Flange bearings would be easier to attach but both ends of the shaft have to be adjustable vertically to remove or adjust the belts. The current bearings are bolted one time to the base with a 12'' bolt and have slots for slide adjustment. Making a bracket to mount a pillow block looks fairly straight forward. If I had the capability I would give the homemade bushing a try, no doubt the pillow block setup is overkill, it's just all I can figure out so far. Thanks..
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