Darren's active projects

[Darren]

I think once the cleaning is done, this will get fun. It just turned way worse than I thought it would be. But, making headway. I only really have the saddle and apron to remove and clean now. You guys still like pics, right?

I can't seem to caption individual photos and I forgot to clean my phone. It's gonna hurt me more than you when I need these pics to try to reassemble this mess. I can see why people tend to gut them and put vfds and 3 phase motors.

 

[YYCHM]

You guys still like pics, right?

Keep the pics coming please

 

[Darren]

Keep the pics coming please

You're the boss!

It is funny seeing the red rotor come out of the parts washer when you see how black it was going in. The stator housing just collapsed the tray in my parts washer. I really need an industrial unit for what i do here. A big dishwasher...

 

[Dabbler]

very nice work! it will be a great machine when done.

 

[PeterT]

In a weird way, I find gunk cleaning kind of therapeutic. If the machine could speak it would be saying thank you. It's like a fresh start. Mechanical/electrical/alignment 'fixing operations' is the important part of course, but at minimum a clean machine makes it easier to see what's going on. That blackened rotor picture is crazy. I like the old Basement Shop guy videos, he did quite a few machine resto's & I found them quite educational. I thought maybe he was a shareholder in Purple Power LOL.

 

[Darren]

So the "tar" inside the lathe body is in fact a sprayed on coating. These a couple areas where it had been masked before spraying. It had to have been applied during manufacturing.

 

[Dabbler]

So the "tar" inside the lathe body is in fact a sprayed on coating.

You can replace it with bed liner!

 

[Susquatch]

So the "tar" inside the lathe body is in fact a sprayed on coating.

Is it by any chance a sound deadener or vibration damper?

 

[Darren]

Apparently it is just that.

Cleaning the inside of 10ee base

There was a past and maybe current oil leak in my 10ee MG which dripped oil down the inside walls at the left end of the lathe The oil has seemingly degraded the "ruff black coating" located on the casting walls to a grease like consistency. I have been trying to remove the areas of the coating...

www.practicalmachinist.com

I'm committed now though as i have been soaking it with fuel. ugh

 

[Darren]

You can replace it with bed liner!

its as tough as any bedliner i've ever seen. Only got soft where it had become oil soaked. That stuff came off easy but deeper into the belly of the beast you'd need an air chisel to put a mark in it. So i have hit a brick wall with that part of the resto.

The other problem is that the stator for the generato's AC motor has degraded insulation and when I tested it I found several partially shorted coils - 2k ohms where it should be infinite/open. Going to take it to the rewinding shop tomorrow. Hopefully its cheaper than the cost of a vfd.....

 

[Susquatch]

The other problem is that the stator for the generato's AC motor has degraded insulation and when I tested it I found several partially shorted coils - 2k ohms where it should be infinite/open. Going to take it to the rewinding shop tomorrow.

When I saw the photos you posted of the inside of the motor, I was afraid that's what you would find and prayed otherwise. Sorry about that. It sucks.

 

[Darren]

I expect things like motor issues on a 1949 machine. I can deal with it. My fear with that is after spending money on a rewind, 3 to 500 I'd guess, and the main contactor is broken, will I find other electrical issues? Everything is 73 years old. I have a new 5hp 3 phase motor here. I'd only need to buy a vfd and make an adapter for the backgrar box. We will see what the motor shop says in the morning.

Here's some pics

 

[140mower]

I expect things like motor issues on a 1949 machine. I can deal with it. My fear with that is after spending money on a rewind, 3 to 500 I'd guess, and the main contactor is broken, will I find other electrical issues? Everything is 73 years old. I have a new 5hp 3 phase motor here. I'd only need to buy a vfd and make an adapter for the backgrar box. We will see what the motor shop says in the morning.

Here's some pics

I see that the quality control manager is overseeing your work in the last picture..... Good luck with the rewind shop. Hopefully things work out. They sure are a pretty machine....

 

[Darren]

I see that the quality control manager is overseeing your work in the last picture..... Good luck with the rewind shop. Hopefully things work out. They sure are a pretty machine....

He is always watching me.

Hopefully I can make them feel sorry for me and give me a deal. I'll tell them it's for my mothers electric wheelchair or something.

It'll work out either way. I'd like to keep it all original but not at significant cost or questionable reliability. I did see the machine run when I picked it up but didn't really get into it too much. He had it wired for 440v , running a RPC into a transformer, running the generator which powered the motor. A vfd with an ac motor sounds so much simpler

 

[Darren]

Sad day today...just got quoted 1500 to 2000 to rewind the stator.

I'm going to have a better look at it and see if there's anything I can do to repair it. Not looking good though.

 

[YotaBota]

Sad day today...just got quoted 1500 to 2000 to rewind the stator.

That's a bit of an ouch, have you got a trades school near by that might do it as a teaching aid? It may cost you materials but that shouldn't be much.

 

[140mower]

Sad day today...just got quoted 1500 to 2000 to rewind the stator.

I'm going to have a better look at it and see if there's anything I can do to repair it. Not looking good though.

Yikes!!!!! That certainly puts a damper on things.
I wonder if that's their real price? Or the "we are super busy, but if he wants to pay it, we'll squeeze it in" price?

 

[Brent H]

@Darren is it 440/220 or just a 440 volt motor?

Can you megger test the windings to see if the insulation is NFG - if not you may be able to do a good clean and varnish to get things into a decent megger result?

IF it is dual voltage maybe you can run on the 220 windings safely.

 

[Darren]

That's a bit of an ouch, have you got a trades school near by that might do it as a teaching aid? It may cost you materials but that shouldn't be much.

Unfortunately no, but good idea.

Yikes!!!!! That certainly puts a damper on things.
I wonder if that's their real price? Or the "we are super busy, but if he wants to pay it, we'll squeeze it in" price?

he didn't seem too interested in helping me at all, and yup, thats the impression that I got from him.

@Darren is it 440/220 or just a 440 volt motor?

Can you megger test the windings to see if the insulation is NFG - if not you may be able to do a good clean and varnish to get things into a decent megger result?

IF it is dual voltage maybe you can run on the 220 windings safely.

its 220/440.

In factory configuration, its a 9 lead motor with 3 leads connected internally. The Steelman method of converting to single phase invloves removing the stator to cut apart the 3 internal wires and bring them out to make a 12 lead motor. Thats where i'm at now.

in the burnt section, the coils themselves show approx 1 ohm, through the coil, all the others are around 2 ohm. Coil to coil, most are at about 800k ohms, but a couple show 2k ohms, no good. I looked to see where , but the short is probably buried. I guess you also can't just rewind a few coils, as they get burnt out in an oven.

I really wanted this to work. It sounded like a spaceship when you started the MG....it was pretty cool.

I'm going to explore AC servos. I know little about them but apparently they are the hot ticket. If that doesn't pan out, i will have to adapt the 5hp motor that I have to the backgear box. With a 3.5kw AC servo you don't need any backgear.

 

[Darren]

So....I jumped in my truck and brought the stator to another local shop. Kilred Winding. Old school guys, father and son, from Austria who actually like to fix things and help people. After some chit chat about what I was trying to accomplish, we brought the stator into the back and hooked it up to the test machine. This machine can pump 10,000 volts through the windings to check for faults. Mine started buzzing at 500 volts, no good, should be good to 2000 volts. The insulation is breaking down. So after much discussion, they are going to try baking it to get any moisture out, then recoating and retesting it. If it works, we are good. If not, we discussed how to drive the generator with another 3 phase motor by shortening up the housing and removing the rotor from the shaft, making a standalone generator, and adding another motor to drive it with either a belt or a lovejoy coupler. May not be all that difficult.