In various home-made mechanisms or devices, a chain drive, which consists of a piece of chain and sprockets, can often be used. And if you can still spend money on a roller chain for homemade work, then buying stars is not necessary. You can make them yourself.
This will require a piece of steel plate, some tools and some free time. Moreover, the stars can be made absolutely any diameter that you need. Now let's look at the process of making home-made stars in more detail.
And first of all, you need to measure the distance between the two rollers (pins) of the bicycle chain. The same distance should be between the individual teeth of the sprocket itself.
It will also be necessary to measure the diameter of the roller. If, for example, the diameter is 8 mm, then for drilling holes in the workpieces, it will be necessary to use an 8 mm drill. Thus, the chain ideally "sits" on the sprocket.
The main stages of work
First, the author makes a draft template that will be used to make homemade stars. To do this, he draws four circles of a circle of different diameters: 12, 24, 36 and 48 mm on a piece of board (you can use plywood).
After that, using a compass, makes a markup. Next, you will need to transfer the dimensions to the blanks of the steel plate. Then we drill holes of the desired diameter - according to the marking and in the center of the workpiece.
At the last stage of the work, it remains only to trim all unnecessary with the help of a grinder and process the sprockets a little on the grinding machine.
For details on how to make chain sprockets from a steel plate, see the video on our website.