Got both motors running - an amateur's guide to upgrading your Hitachi Resaw Bandsaw

I've noticed that the price on the current model of the Hitachi Resaw Bandsaw is now a wallet busting $3700 @ amazon.com. I've also noticed along with the higher price, is a bigger 2.8 HP motor. As per amazon's website: "The motor is a powerful 2.8 HP that you can upgrade and attach to the side mount with ease for that extra power." I guess someone in R&D @ Hitachi noticed that people tend to do the motor upgrade, swapping out the smaller 1.5 Hp motor and thought they'd join the party. Speaking as someone who as just successfully completed the upgrade on their fairly old 600A model (the predecessor to the current model), I couldn't be happier with the results. The saw just cuts and cuts and cuts. NO MORE BOGGING DOWN! So...for the curious here is a brief synopsis of what I did and how I did it. Keep in mind, I am not a professional, strictly an amateur who is not afraid to cut upgrade his tools. My total cost for the motor upgrade was about $300. I did all the work myself - took about 4-5 hours total. The best part of the upgrade was finding a NEW 5HP Baldor Motor on ebay, for a fairly decent price.

Now the title says, "Got both motors running"... The original motor on the saw, which I had thought had died, thus prompting me to finally upgrade it to a bigger motor, still works. In fact, I took all of the original power cords, etc. off the saw, plugged it in, and it fired right up. It was released back into the wild via ebay.

A couple of things to keep in mind. The rated RPM of the existing motor is about 900 rpm (according to the Hitachi Manual). Thus, depending on the RPM of the replacement motor, you should shoot for that as well. Turns out it's pretty easy to calculate using this URL:

http://www.temecularodrun.com/ref/rpm_calc.asp

There are 3 known values and one unknown, which is the NEW pulley size, assuming you don't reuse the old double pulley.

RPM Drive Motor: 1725
Drive Pulley Size: ???
Driven Pulley Size: 5"
Desired RPM: 900

The calculator then says I need a drive pulley (pulley on the motor) of 2.61 inches. I erred on the size of caution and I got one that was 2.75 inches. A 2.75 pulley gives an RPM of 949. Close enough! A 3250 RPM motor would need a pulley around 1.4".

So the next problem to solve was how to mount the thing to the saw. I was able to mount it "simply" by drilling some new holes in the motor mount plate and the saw's exterior mounting plate. I had to drill an elongated hole, so the bolt that sits at the bottom of the plate and allows you to adjust the belt tension, would simply slide through. The metal is thick, so I used a Cobalt bit and lots of cutting oil.

Once the new motor was mounted it seem to line up pretty well with the other pulley. Next, I put the motor's pulley on and wired in the new switch. I mounted the magnetic switch a small piece of plywood and used the old switch's mounting holes to mount the plywood.

The default rotation of the motor was backwards, so I had to reverse the motor direction as per the motor's wiring diagram. So...make sure you buy a reversible motor!

Now, everything is mounted and wired, it was time to put the belt cover back on. Of course it didn't fit with the new bigger motor - so I cut a hole in the belt cover where the pulley shaft of the motor was, to allow the shaft to "stick out" beyond the edge of the belt cover.

The old motor weighed about 15#. The new motor weighs about 85#.

Here is synopsis of parts/prices:
=================================

Motor: 5 HP Baldor 1725 RPM, 220V 21 AMP Motor. Frame 184T.
Source: Ebay.com
Cost: $225 (new).

Switch: 5 HP Rated 220V Magnetic Switch
Source: Taken from the Rockwell-Delta disk/belt sander combo machine
Cost: $0 (but I will have to replace the sander's switch and that will cost ~ $10)

Pulley: 2.7" OD 1-1/8" Bore 2-Groove 'B' Belt Pulley Maska
Source: ebay.com
Cost: $35

Belts: 2 48" Long New Goodyear V-belts (old belts were 45" long and just a little too short)
Source: Local auto-parts store
Cost: $41

Mounting Bolts with rubber washers inside the bolt
Source: Hardware Store
Cost: $2

Cord/Plugs: Heavy duty 220V power cord and 220V Twist n' Lock Plug
Source: The Shop
Cost: $0

Get the Motor Running

Pretty much ever since I bought a used Hitachi Bandsaw for re-sawing, I've hated the puny little stock motor that it came with. Don't get me wrong - it's a cute little motor, if all you ever resaw is cute little pieces of wood. The motor is rated 1.5 HP, but I think they misplaced the decimal point and it's really 0.15 HP. Naturally, I've ignored the need to replace the motor until I've actually needed to replace the motor. I suspect the motor felt my contempt towards it's meager performance and very graciously and unceremoniously died on me last week. So...motor shopping I went. I looked at various online vendors and then wandered over on Ebay. There, I stumbled onto someone selling overstock BALDOR motors running at the lower RPM of 1740. And it was the frame size I needed for the Hitachi. So I ordered it and am now waiting patiently to get the motor running. The whole idea of replacing the motor came about 3 years ago I asked Bruce Creps at Notable Woods (http://www.notablewoods.com) who also uses the same type of Hitachi as I do, what he did to upgrade his motor. And he very graciously responded and gave me a few tips about the pulley size. BTW, they sell very beautiful wood and they re-saw A LOT of wood.

Coupons

Everybody loves coupons, especially on the Internet. I can't tell you how many times I go to check out on an Internet shopping site and I see a little box that says, "Enter Coupon Code" and I immediately ask the Google and it politely responds with a relavent Coupon Code thus saving me some $. I've looked into how to add coupon(s) code(s) to my own site and Paypal (my payment Pimp), has been promising coupon code like functionality for payment processing at least 3+ years, but has yet to deliver. So...it leaves people such as myself, the option of either going out and using a 3rd party shopping cart application which does support coupons, or rolling my own. I opted for the latter. So...if and when I ever finish the 115 boards currently in the work queue, select boards will have a little Coupon Code box next to the "Add Item to Cart" button. I will offer the coupon code as some type of certificate towards future purchases for anyone buying a board, once I start completing the current set of boards and offering them for sale. And for those of you who happen to be reading this, I will reveal one of the 3 coupon codes now. You can probably guess the other 2! :-> The code is "envmero-10" which will give 10% off the price of selected boards (i.e. those boards with a coupon code box next to the "Add to Cart" button). The other 2 coupon codes will be for 20% off and 30% off. *** REMEMBER - you have to enter the coupon code, click the "APPLY COUPON" Button AND then add the item to the cart. When you go to checkout via Paypal, the discount should be reflected in the checkout price (or view cart). The coupon will only apply to select boards.

Have Cribbage Board Will Travel and Saving $ on Supplies

Now that I've seemed to reached the Saturation Point of selling templates on ebay, I am focusing my attention on back on drilling cribbage boards. I'm about 1/2 way through drilling the 100+ boards currently in the work queue. Some of the smaller boards which would have been relegated to the classic 2 pass, 2 street, no continuous track layout, have instead gotten a new continuous layout. I'm calling this new drill pattern a 2 or 3 player continuous track layout in a convenient travel size.

I actually got the idea to do a layout like this about a year or so ago when someone emailed me wanting a continuous track template layout for a board length of 12" or less. At the time I couldn't think of a way to do it, but recently, when thinking about new template layouts, I remembered the request and came up with the layout. The 2 player size length is actually less than 12". It's 10" long and about 3" wide. The 3 player travel size board is 10" long about 4" wide.

There seems to be a consistent pattern to supplies and running out of supplies. I have 5 items (not counting wood), that I have to restock from time to time. These include packaging tape, bubble wrap, complimentary frig magnets, template mounting screws and plastic cleaner/glazer. I hate running out, so I keep a look out for ways to save $ and stock up at the same time. Costco recently had a sale on packaging tape, so I stocked up on that. VistaPrint.com constantly wants to give me free magnets (I just pay a nominal shipping fee), so I stock up on those. I bought 2000 mounting screws from McFeely's, so I'm good with those for the next 200+ templates. To tackle the running low on the plastic glazer/cleaner problem, I'm going to pick up a gallon of the stuff next I'm at Tap Plastics. Finally, that leaves bubble wrap. Last time I bought it, I got a good deal on 4 100 ft rolls at ebay. And its almost time to buy some more.

19 Templates & Counting off to 29

So having settled on 19 template designs, I've mapped out the last 10 designs - which will give me a total of 29 template designs. It wasn't that hard to come up with another 10 designs. I actually came up with more than 10 designs, so I had to pare it down. The last 10 template designs will be as follows:

1) 2 Player CT Tournament Style - with half circles - 180 Degree curve every 10 points - kind of like a Sin Wave.
2) 3 Player CT Smaller/Compact Oval Design - similar to the existing oval design, but more compact
3) 3 Player CT Rectangle with an "S" Curve track orientable in either direction
4) 3 Player CT Square
5) 3 Player CT Triangle
6) 3 Player CT Star
7) 3 Player CT Full Circle - right now the circle template is a half template, that you flip to come full circle - assuming I get the plastic in this larger size
8) 3 Player CT Quasi Circle
9) 3 Player Spiral - Spiral inward - not outward
10) 3 Player CT - Board in the shape of a 29!

Ebay and the Mafia - they both skim 20% off the top

2009 marks ten years that I have been a buyer and seller on ebay. I like ebay for buying things, not so much for selling. I don't sell crib/chess boards on Ebay anymore. I prefer etsy.com for selling crib/chess boards as a supplemental selling channel to my website. By far, my biggest complaint about selling on Ebay are the high fees (as a percentage of the item sold). For me, it's approximately 20% of the cost of the item sold. (Insertion Fee + Final Value Fee (12%) + Paypal processing Fee (%6)). Ebay owns paypal.com BTW, so it's all going into ebay's pocket. In the end it adds up to about 20%. Ouch! So why bother? If you have something to sell on the Internet, ebay is still a viable way to sell it, despite the ridiculously high fees. That said, I'm testing the waters of selling crib templates on ebay. I've sold a lot of templates off the website, but I thought I'd test the ebay waters to see what kind of response I get.

Holiday Doldrums - And Looking to New Year

My tracking software I use to show unique hits per day on the website, showed a high traffic peak in Early December, and then it tapered off for the rest of the month. Since I had planned to have 100+ new boards ready in time for the Holidays (and I didn't), I figured I would just settle in and wait for the next Holiday Season. January rolled in and order for Templates picked up quite a bit. So...right now I offer 19 different style of templates with plans for 10 more styles of templates. Templates have proven to be an interesting little side business. Obviously, a lot less time and effort goes into making a template than a board. Whereas I spend 2-4 hours on a given board, I typically spend 15 minutes (or less) to drill a template and about 15 minutes cleaning, packaging and shipping the template. But, given the strong sales of templates, it's pretty clear people enjoy making their own cribbage boards. Sales seemed to peak in Mid January when I shipped 10 templates in one week. I think offering a discount on shipping of multiple templates help encourage people to buy more than one template.

Looking into the new year, I should be able to finish all the items that are in my work queue at the moment. As always, I think the boards I'm working on now and better than boards I've done in the past - which is the way it should be. I'm trying to come up with a new and clever way to sell more boards - maybe offer a free cribbage template, if you buy a cribbage board. :-> Etsy is definitely a Holiday Place for shopping. I won't expect sales from it until next Holiday Season. I still don't know if I will ever figure out the magic formula for pricing my boards.