[TheForge] Home-made grinders and wire brushes

[Bruce Freeman]

Right, that's why I'm wondering whether a partially "potted" wire
wheel would make sense.  To whit:  Take a wire wheel, say, 6" in
diameter.  The hub, etc., accounts for 1" to 1.5", perhaps, so you've
got "working" wire length of maybe 1.75"-2".  But no one ever uses a
wheel down to the hub.  If you wear off 1" of radius, that's a lot.

So suppose you coax some sort of liquid rubber (GE Silicone Seal RTV?
Shoe Goo?) into the mass of wires from the hub out to a radius of
maybe 3.5", but no further.  This leaves free wires extending 1.5"
beyond the rubber.  Rooted in rubber, the wires would tend to flex
across a longer length (I hypothesize) than without the rubber, and,
hence, would be less likely to break off.  Clearly, the nature of the
rubber matters a lot for this to work -- the hardness, the fatigue
resistance, the adhesion between rubber and wires, etc.

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 1:50 PM, peter fels <artgawk at thegrid.net> wrote:
>
> On Jun 23, 2011, at 7:42 AM, Bruce Freeman wrote:
>
>> There are wire wheels "potted" (thoroughly impregnated) with rubber.
>> I've seen these but never tried them.  In principal, they should be
>> less likely to throw wires, and slightly less likely to snag the work.
>>
>> I'm wondering whether it might make sense to impregnate at least the
>> inner part of the wires in rubber like this to relieve to some extent
>> the stress they're under at the base, thus subjecting them to less
>> fatigue (from bending back and forth at the base) and, hence,
>> breakage.  Any thoughts?
>>
>
>
> Seems right Bruce..certainly would be safer, cut more aggressively
> and last longer.
> The drawback i see is that one usually uses a wire wheel to get penetration into
> depressed features in a surface and potted wires won't penetrate very deeply.
>
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-- 
Bruce
NJ