Circular from a washing machine engine

Such a useful thing as a working motor from an automatic washing machine should not be lying around idle in your garage.

Any self-respecting DIYer's hands will itch at the sight of such a promising detail.

In this article we will tell you how to use such an engine to make a very good lightweight and compact circular saw, on which you can easily unroll the fiftieth board or even a 10x10 block.

Attention! Assembling a circular saw with your own hands and its further use can be dangerous! Therefore, do not take on this business if you are not confident in your skills and do not follow safety rules! This article is not a call to action. And remember, all responsibility for what you do lies only with you!

How to connect the motor?

Connecting the motor is the most important stage of work; if you cannot connect the motor from the washing machine correctly, then you will not be able to make a circular machine with your own hands. The whole difficulty is not even in the connection, but in achieving stable adjustment of the motor speed; without this, the circular saw will not work normally - the disk will tear the lumber.

The manufacturer installs a so-called tachometer or speed control sensor on the engine of a washing machine. But the problem is that the operation of this sensor is controlled by the electronic module of the washing machine; you cannot install such a module on a circular machine, so you will have to think about a device that will control the engine speed. Details on how regulate the engine speed of the washing machine is described in the article of the same name.

Moving parts

Having successfully connected the motor from an automatic washing machine with your own hands and checked how it picks up and slows down, you can start making our circular machine. The diagram below shows a simplified drawing of a homemade circular saw made using a washing machine engine.

The diagram can be further simplified by starting from the bearing assembly. For household circulars this is quite acceptable.

For now, we will be interested only in the moving elements of the circular, which will bear the main load, namely:

• circular saw shaft;
• automatic washing machine motor shaft;
• drive belt;
• automatic washing machine motor pulley;
• circular saw shaft pulley.

The drive mechanism should operate as follows. The motor from the washing machine drives a shaft with a small pulley pressed onto it. A small pulley is fitted with a drive belt, which transmits speed to a large pulley, which is mounted on a shaft that drives the circular saw. At first glance, everything seems simple, but when you make a circular, a lot of subtle difficulties emerge that have to be resolved.

1. The small pulley must be sharpened with your own hands, making 3-4 transverse grooves on it, so that the belt clings to them and does not slip.
2. The drive belt does not have to be taken from an automatic washing machine; you can take a similar part from any other equipment, as long as the belt is strong and has serrations.
3. On a large pulley, you will have to weld a disc of slightly larger diameter on the edge with your own hands to form a kind of protrusion that will prevent the drive belt from slipping off during operation.On a large pulley, it is not necessary to grind the serrations; the clutch with the belt will be normal without this.
4. The shaft on which the circular saw will be held, as well as the nut and washer, must be reliable so that, firstly, the circular saw does not deform at high speeds, and secondly, so that the circular saw does not jump out and cause harm to the person working with the circular saw. . It is better to take a ready-made shaft, washers and a nut from a standard factory circular.

The described mechanism is designed for a three-hundredth disk. There are many skeptics who say that the motor of a washing machine will not pull such a disk, and that at some point it will stop during operation, and the saw will get stuck in the board. Our experts respond to such skeptics as follows.

• Firstly, you need to be able to work with a circular saw and not push anything onto the rotating saw.
• Secondly, this circular saw will be purely for household use; it is designed for short-term work with a small amount of lumber. If you want to make a circular machine for business, then purchase special components; such equipment cannot be made from scrap parts.
• Thirdly, practice shows that quite a lot of craftsmen use such homemade equipment and are very satisfied. At least the reviews from them are mostly positive.

In the future, do not overload your homemade circular machine with work, and most importantly, do not let the engine run for a long time without load.

Bed and frame

Having collected the parts for the moving parts of the circular, all we have to do is make a reliable frame and stand for our circular. In principle, for the frame of a household circular saw, you can take the most common material at hand, for example, a piece of thick flat slate.Cutting a rectangle out of it and cutting a hole for a circular saw costs nothing. But we are supporters of capital structures, so we prefer to take a 3 mm thick sheet of metal for the circular frame, and a 30 mm metal corner for the frame.

The figure above clearly shows what elements the frame of a homemade circular saw consists of. In this case, it is also welded with your own hands, only the supports are not a static metal corner, but special homemade stands. The stand is made of two metal pipes of different diameters, which are inserted into each other, so the table frame can be adjusted in height.

Experts insist on a welded frame design for the circular saw, since vibration has a bad effect on static fastenings created with bolts. Although if you don’t have welding, as a last resort, you can make a frame from the corners, fastening them together with bolts and nuts. It is also better to weld the bed to the frame.

So, it is quite possible to make a circular machine from a washing machine engine with your own hands if you have experience in making various homemade products. Try it yourself and perhaps you will gain some experience that you can later share with our readers. Good luck!

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