01/17/2026
This is an automated rollout wheel. I've been looking at the standard (manual) ones for a while but they are a little expensive. Motorized ones are way out of the budget.
A few years ago i made a rotary table for the mill using an old flywheel from an sr20 and some large bearings.
I recycled some of the parts of that project into this one, but i needed to make some modifications to make it work vertically instead of flat on the table. Mostly it needed a new center hub design as well as one standard and one thrust bearing.
I went with this style lathe head for a few reasons. It's slim and therfore lighter. It has a large vareity of grip range. And finally it didn't require any keys to open/ close it. This final reason turned out to be not so great, but it is what it is. Just have to lock it out to open/ close it.
After i got the lathe head mounted to the flywheel, i was like hey let's use these teeth....Instead of having a bolt to lockout the head from turning like most rollout wheels do, i made a little chunk of flat gear with a left hand thread mechanism to lock the wheel out.
I've been playing with stepper motors and controllers on my other welding positioner project, so i got more parts. I had the drive gear from a starter that i initially used for the rotary so i got a stepper with that size bore. I made a mount for the motor with adjustability for back lash, and got it running both forward and backward with speed control (very slow stable speed being the requirement)
In trying to come up with some fancy way of getting the pipe level, i did a temporary bolt adjuster. I realized that i could also flip the chuck up flat for a mobile horizontal positioner as well as the current vertical. So the temp bolt adjuster is now good enough. Not fancy but functional.
I then had to make the lockout arms to hold the thing up flat and not come crashing down. It's heavy. The arms took a little trial and error and a bit of computer aided guessing. I only had to scrap one part! Lol. But in the end i got it to clear "down" and fully lock it "up".
I also made an arm that goes into the tow hitch for this thing to sit into. I didn't take a pic of that but it's just a big 90 arm to clear the lift gate of the armada (weld rig)
I did a bench test and it will work on 12vdc, but the motor really wants 24 to 36vdc. I have a power supply that I'll wire up to 110vac, but i could theoretically run it off the car battery.
All and all, it took some time but it works great. I used it in the shop to weld up axles and fl**ges on my son's go kart project and it was awesome. I can't wait for the next pipe or exhaust job so i can really test it out.
