I recently bought out a couple of pieces of equipment from a metal shop where the owner was retiring. One is a vertical metal cutting bandsaw that weighs like a ton, and cuts great. The other piece is an equally heavy 6 x 48 inch belt sander/ 12 inch disc sander combo. It also is heavy cast iron, and the 6 x 48 sanding belt drives directly off of a steel drum on one side of the motor and the disc drives directly off the other side. There are no belts, pulleys etc.

The thing is downright dangerous..........it spins at way too high of a speed, so much so that it scares me to get near it when it is running. I put a good Norton disc on it and it shapes metal like there is no tomorrow, but the other night Dan was shaping a piece of steel and the sanding disc exploded. It knocked his safety glasses off and put a cut on his face. Luckily, it isn't a deep cut and I think he won't have any scarring. He said he will never use that thing again, and I can't blame him. I considered just tossing it in the dumpster so that no one would ever get hurt again, but it really is a nice quality piece, and if I can get the speed under control I think it will be ok.

I have researched on the internet either a variable or fixed controller to drop the rpms maybe in half, but am coming up empty. The motor is of unknown HP as the self adhesive info tag is long gone, but it is a 120 volt motor, maybe 3-5 HP if I had to guess. I've looked in Graingers catalog and still can't find what I know must exist somewhere. Not sure if the control would work by cutting down the voltage or the pulses, or whatever. Cutting down the voltage would be a problem because when we were first trying the sander out we used a 25 foot extension cord and it overheated the cord and the motor stopped running.............it draws a bunch of juice.

So what am I looking for and where do I find one? Thanks for any help you can give.

Don