Home Built Rollers
 

Has anybody attempted to build homemade rollers for your bike? if so what materials did you use and roughly a cost, im thinking of build some since i have a few materials at my disposal

Using YOUR home lathe, machine shop ? or .. what tools do you have ..

You're talking about a fairly high degree of precision.... Aligning the rollers themselves, installing high-quality bearings...
I don't see why a decent machinist couldn't do it.

rollers aren't that expensive. unless you already have the necessary tools and materials, it would be tough to justify making vs. buying.

I just picked up an all-steel set for occasional use, from craigslist for $45.

These are about as crude as you'll find and look like you could make something similar if you had access to a machine shop.

Since I ride in the Winter, they're acceptable quality for the use they'll get.

They feature formed sheet steel side rails with lightening holes and large dia. seamed steel tubing rollers with end caps that hold the sealed bearings. The front roller is adjustable by moving the protruding bolt ends (possibly threaded rod?) within slots along the side of the rails and tightening the nuts.

Due to being seamed tubing, the rollers wobble very slightly and they ring like a gong when you tap on them with a knuckle. They're also loud in use.

For limited use, you could probably make something like these. For regular use, I'd really consider buying a better set.

While some like to do machine & assembly work at home it will be cheaper to buy a ready made roller since all the engineering,machining etc. is already done for you. A ready made roller could also be safer than homebuilt.

Now if you go shopping for something nice, Tacx has some with a flare on the ends of the rollers
to keep you from riding off the ends so easily..

adding a inline skate /board roller really helps keep you on the front roller
[axis points up on one of those, 90 degrees from the roller axis]

Well i do have access to a machine shop and was thinking about using some sort of heavy duty wheel bearing for a truck (since i work at a Jeep Shop all this stuff is very accessable) and just machining the rollers out of some DOM tubing or even solid stock steel using a Chain and a gear to connect to front and rear rollers does this sound like a good idea????

Way back there were roller races, several sets side by side , with a speedometer display for each.

the rollers were large wooden drums, 3 of them, and set into the floor for dismounting.

there were indoor tracks back then too, they were made of wood.

Britain and Europe still hav wooden velodromes.

It seems to work great, though not much precison http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKEHoA_xl-U

This is an interesting concept. Let us know how it progresses if you do decide to take on this project!