Okay, this is cool. While I’ve seen folks widen their own steel wheels on several videos, the process usually involves a large lathe or some seriously sketchy stuff. This one seems way less sketchy than those and doesn’t require a big expensive lathe. Before any of you OSHA inspectors out there start talking about how it is bad to change wheels, weld on wheels, or what have you, know that we are just sharing a cool video of a machine we think is neat and might try on our own. If you want to do the same, that’s on you.
If you have the ability to weld and to measure relatively accurately, you can make this little rig right here. And since it uses a 4.5 inch angle grinder it is something that anyone thinking of doing this should have in their shop anyway. And the electric motor that he uses, along with the drive assembly, means that you can use this same machine to weld the wheels back together, it is not just for cutting them apart.
Video Description:
The machine is very helpful in making the widening of steel wheels, for the drive I used an electric motor with a gear, the engine speed was additionally reduced so that it was possible to weld not only with the mig method but also with the tig method. With such a widening of the wheels, work must be done very carefully, without haste, weld with high current to perform remelting. The wheel that I widened is much harder to widen than the regular wheel, but thanks to the rollers, I managed to make this wheel perfectly, the rollers help to center and align the wheel axis.
