We hope to have belt drive conversion kits in around 6-8 weeks if you're not in a hurry.

Hugh Amadeal

4 Rib Poly Vee conversion will out perform any Vee Belt

A 4 rib belt is hardly necessary on a mini-mill!

Having burnt out a motor and mashed a gear on my WM 18 cutting holes in the new motors base and working on a belt drive is the logical way forward.

Of course the reply of "Many people fit COOLING FANS to their mills!!" from Warco did not go down too well. Most modern stuff needs to be considered a starting point these days, still. The belts and pulleys I got from Bearing Boys waits to be done. Well the 15mm by 5 mm pitch belts will be got when I measure from the job. They are pilot bore so you can choose the hole size.

Mine works fine 4 Ribs "J" section powered by a 1.25 hp DC motor

Same query for WM16. the nearest I have seen is the equivalent for Grizzly 0704 on their site, they supply kits for the 0704 but from the states, which requires large import / custom charges.

George.

I have a Warco WM16 gearhead mill and was also considering taking a punt on this Turkish supplier of belt conversions http://www.mbbilici.com/

I would be interested to learn from anyone that has purchased a conversion unit, what was the actual customs / VAT charge on import?

Has anyone fitted that particular conversion to an actual WM16? Do they have pictures or a description they could share? Looking at the picture of the unit, I cant grasp how it is fitted to a WARCO 16 other than somehow over the spindle on top of the existing Hi/Lo gear stack. Does this mean that the motor cover / speed pick up may have to be modified to re-fit? Is there still a noise issue with the gears (presumably less as no longer under load).

Can this mod be simply carried out with the head left in place on the machine? Or does it actually involve pressing out of bearings etc. to remove the intermediate gear shaft and/or Hi/Lo spindle gears? (ie. almost complete dismantling?).

From the warco manual, if the shafts are pressed out of the head casting, will this damage either the upper or lower bearing on removal and require a replacement? may not matter if the intermediate gear and shaft is to be binned anyway.

Any info gratefully appreciated.

Even with ear plugs, the ear shattering shriek from this machine of when running at speed is tiresome, to put it mildly and puts me off using. While I have managed to avoid damaging the plastic gears so far, I suspect that is down to good luck rather than good management, so any simple mod that engineers out these two issues would be a delight!

Having poked and prodded my WM16 mill to take a few dimensions, I made some amazing discoveries peering through the little inspection port on the head…

The Hi/Lo gear assemblies are in fact both steel on my version, gasp! explaining two things, why I haven’t managed to break them and why they are so bloody noisy. I must have the pre ‘value engineered’ version of the mill!

I am fairly certain now that the belt drive large pulley from the kit just slips over the collar on top of the mill spindle and is crimped into place with a grub screw. This means that all that needs to be done is to keep the gear selector at zero engagement and a quiet drive should result.

Clearly, if the belt option is employed, changing the speed range of the mill will require taking the motor cover off and a bit of manual fiddle, but worth it to preserve ones hearing.

Should you have a future dispute with your neighbours, it will also be easy to restore the mill to original condition and continue to run at maximum speed into the early hours of the morning.