What is the Optimal Motor Size for a 10 Diameter Drum Sander?

[jmhockey23]

Hello,

Hopefully I'm posting in the right section and someone can help me with this. I'm building a drum sander that will be used primarily for carving canoe paddles. I was originally planning on making it 6" in diameter with 3/4" MDF board circled glued together to create a 18" wide drum. After cutting a circle I decided I wanted a larger drum...10" diameter. Then after cutting the circles I realized that the weight of the drum was adding up quickly and I questioned the strength of my motor. The motor I purchased is a Grizzly 1/3 hp 1725 RPM, 110v/5.3a, TEFC. I have a keyed 3/4" steel shaft that it will spin, what I was hoping was a 10" diameter 18" wide drum of MDF. I'm wondering do I need to upgrade? Or would making the drum smaller say 15" or 13" wide or going back down to 6 or 8" diameter be better. The weight of 12 3/4" of the discs was about 26 lbs or about 2lbs per 3/4" thick 10" diameter MDF board. Any opinion would be appreciated before I keep building.

Thanks!

 

[billy_joule]

The drum size and weight affects how fast the motor will get up to speed and the sandpaper speed for a given rpm but is not a concern for motor power requirements during normal operation, in fact a larger drum will give a more stable belt speed as it acts like a flywheel.

What paper speed do you want?

 

[jmhockey23]

That makes sense. I don't have a set goal for the speed. I just know from my research people who've made similar sanders have used 1725 RPM motors with equal sized motors. My plan was to test that out to see how it works and then adjust pulley size if I wanted a slower speed. So you think it sounds like it would work okay?