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Posted by David Sherman [216.18.131.145] on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 19:41:19 :
In Reply to: Re: Great info. Thanks posted by Clint Dixon [74.206.62.94] on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 19:18:22 :
You're right, I'm pretty sure the $75 jeep belt pulley was just the belt pulley unit. I'm surprised reproducing the gears would be expensive. They can made be on a CNC mill these days, and I doubt the metalurgy or heat treat is critical for something like this. As for the castings, in the old days when every city worth the name had an iron foundry, they would probably be cheap too, since there's little tooling involved, but nowadays there aren't many iron foundries that can do anything better than sewer covers and the work is not cheap. I'm thinking a functional low-volume repro could best be made by CNC milling an aluminum sand casting. Still, this is one of those things where the prices are high but the demand is not very deep. Aside from the casting patterns, I'm not sure there's any tooling involved. Splines can be milled rather than rolled or broached. I doubt there are any forgings, or formed sheet metal pieces in them. I'm familiar with aluminum sand castings because we used them for the housings of industrial bar code scanners back in the '80s. The surface was rough, just like cast iron, and the patterns were cheap, like cast iron, but the foundry equipment and skill involved were less than with iron. The aluminum was poured just like iron or bronze and filled molds by gravity.
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