chkorte
02-10-2011, 09:11 PM
A couple of weeks ago my CW was giving me grief, not measuring boards correctly. I went on the forum and researched the problem. Two things I found to check were the O-ring and belt curling under itself. Well I found I was missing the O-ring but the belts looked fine. I replaced the O-ring but still had the problem. I took a closer look at the sandpaper belts and discovered that they had indeed curled under about 1/8”. That 1/8” apparently caused the board to not make good contact with the O-ring and the brass star wheel. I took the CW apart per the online instructions and removed the sandpaper belts. Not having any new ones I on hand I trimmed about 1/2” off of the bad end, flipped them end for end and reinstalled them. A quick check and the CW is operating fine. Here we are a couple weeks and a few carves later and I look and see the belts are again creeping up on the end of the rollers. Not looking forward to dismantling the CW, not to mention I still don’t have another set of belts, I looked for a way to slide the belts back down on the rollers without dismantling them and found one. I made a shaped block out of wood and then using another piece of wood as a pry bar between the roller and the out feed tray I compressed the spring on the end of each roller and used the block I had made to hold the spring compressed while I slid the sandpaper belts back down the roller. On the one end I just used a square block of wood between the roller and the tray but on the other end I needed a block specially shaped to fit behind the roller and rest on the end of the pin that holds the roller. Worked great. A couple of things to remember. When using that piece of wood as a pry bar between the roller and the out feed tray stay as close as you can to the end of the roller. Prying on the roller in the middle could bend the roller. On the back end of the roller you can position the block so it rests on the end of the roller but on the front end of the roller you need the block specially shaped to fit behind the roller because the sandpaper belts will be right to the end of the roller. This trick does nothing to fix the belt if it is curling under itself. In that case you will need to dismantle the CW and take the sandpaper belts off to fix them. Also when using a piece of wood as a pry bar use a piece that is almost as thick as the space between the roller and the out feed tray. If you compress the springs and have the blocks in place and can’t get the sandpaper belts to slide then you didn’t make the blocks wide enough. Two of the pictures show the blocks in place and the third one just shows the profile. I plan on making a new block out of steel now that I know what they should look like.