I recently used a surplus windshield wiper motor in a drum coffee
roaster application. The drum has an 11 inch diameter, and the motor
can reliably do about 5 pounds of coffee beans. It's coupled with a
pulley that's almost 1:1 just now.
The drum has agitation vanes inside which are optimized to keep the
beans tossing about, but the simple picture is that they're being
lifted on a 5" radius (on average).
The drum's size easily allows for a 10 - 12 pound batch, but the motor
I've been using can't handle that at all.
What this layman needs is a bit of guidance on how to understand what
kind of torque specifications I should look for in a gearmotor that
will do the trick.
I'd be glad of any tips!
TIA
- S
1. windshield washer motor may not like running continuously - you want a
continuous duty motor
2. if I understand it right, you want to lift 12 pounds by 10 inches - to be
conservative, assume all the weight is at the extreme end of your 5 inch
radius, so you have 12X5 inch pounds of torque (e.g. 60 inch pounds or 5
foot pounds) of torque needed when the weight is exactly horizontal. I'd
probably add another 100% to that and look for 10 foot pounds of torque.
You might find a copy of the Bosch electric motor (aftermarket program)
catalogue useful. I have a printed copy, it may be available for
download or you may have to request one from a Bosch rep. Basically
lists all sorts of motors which I think derive from automotive
applications but which have a wider use. It give sizes, duty, voltage
and power consumption figures, torque curves. It may be helpful as you
might find the same or equivalent motor and may be able to find a more
powerful alternative.
Regarding William Noble's comment about duty cycle, those listed which
appear to be windscreen types are listed S1 duty (continuous) which
makes sense as it rains a lot in some parts of the world.
It might be worthwhile looking at a motor from a truck as they have
larger wipers but are likely to be 24V, at least they are typically in
the UK. Also the wiper motors are often only intended to run in one
direction and don't run as well in reverse so that may be worth checking
in your app.
If you have 12 pounds of coffee beans at 6" radius (1/2 foot for easy math)
it would take 6 foot pounds of torque. I don't know what your ideal RPM is
but I'll attempt to calculate approximate HP at 30 RPM.
30 RPM is 1/2 rev per second, at 5 inch radius I'll estimate 1-1/2 feet per
second
6 pounds of torque at 1.5 fps = 9 ft/lbs/second.
IIRC 1 HP = 550 ft/lbs/second. So you need 0.0164 HP, or 1/61 HP for 30
rpm, scale for the actual rpm you intend to use. Since gearboxes, bearings,
etc are not 100% efficient, upsize a bit from this. I would look for
something perhaps 1/40 HP or larger. Since 746 Watts = 1 HP, you need a
little over 12 Watts of motor power @100% efficiency, a 1/40 HP motor =
18.65Watts (not actual electricity usage, output HP, some motors are rated
in HP, some in Watts).
Gearing - What you have / what you want.
If you find a 1750 RPM motor and want 30 RPM, 1750/30 = 58.33, you would
look for somewhere around a 60:1 gearbox.
To just answer your torque question, you need around 6 ft /lbs, or 72
in/lbs, or 1152 in/oz of torque at the drum.
Hope this helps
RogerN
Adding to what Roger said about gearing down to reduce
RPM: when you gear down to reduce speed, you multiply
the torque that the motor can deliver by the same ratio
as you geard down the rpm. So, for example, say you
gear down to reduce the speed to 1 tenth. That makes
your motor effectively 10 times stronger. A 100 RPM
motor capable of delivering 1 foot pound of torque geared
down to 10 RPM will deliver 10 foot pounds of torque through
the gears. There will be some loss due to friction,
so the actual delivered torque will be something a bit
under 10 foot pounds.
Ed
On Mon, 13 Nov 2006 19:22:44 GMT, ehsjr
proclaimed to the world:
This reminded me of my past in the US Navy. I took care of the main
engine controls on the last conventional powered aircraft carrier
built. It has four main engines consisting of huge GE steam turbines.
The reduction gears tower above you. All that turbine torque reduced
down to less than 100 rpm to a 30 inch drive shafts. There is no
clutch or reverse. A separate turbine drives the whole thing in
reverse. Anyway, the weight of the drive shafts and span between
bearing blocks made it necessary to slowly turn the shafts while in
port to keep the shafts from sagging. We "jacked" the turbine,
reduction gears and main shaft with a fractional HP electric motor.
Because we could connect the jacking motor to a huge ring gear on one
of the turbine's larger rotors, there is little gearing loss.
One night while looking down into the dry dock, I had a vision of the
worlds largest barbecue pit, with a tied and spittled Godzilla slowly
turning over the fire. In this application the jacking gear would have
to be sped up or the big lizard would get burnt on one side. I don't
remember the exact turn rate anymore. I knew then. It's somewhere
around 2 RPD.
On 11/12/06 10:27 PM, in article
snipped-for-privacy@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com,
" snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com" wrote:
Read a high school level physics book on simple machines.
Bill
-- Fermez le Bush
This won't solve the problem, but one place to start would be to
measure the torque you have. Since torque is measured in foot-lbs, you
just need to measure the force exerted by a lever-arm one foot long.
Make up a bar with a distance of one foot from the motor shaft to a
large hole at the other end. Then connect a spring scale (such as a
fish scale) to the large hole and secure the scale and the motor to a
firm bench or something. Turn on the motor and read the force on the
scale. This is the stall torque of the motor. If I remember
correctly, a rough estimate for optimum power is between 65% and 80% of
the stall torque. The exact value for the optimum power is measurable
from the motor torque curves, but these may be hard to find for a
surplus motor.
Hope this helps you get a handle on what you have now.
ww88
snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure that the stated reason for "jacking" is correct. Many power
plants use gas turbines to run peaking generators for short-term loads
When those are idle, they are kept moving slowly by "turning gear"
(different industry, different name). The purpose is not to prevent the
steel shafts of alternator and turbine from taking a set, but to keep
oil from being squeezed out of the lower parts of the bearings by steady
unidirectional pressure. Some modern installations use pumps to force
oil flow even when the shafts are stationary. This has the advantage
that recovery from power failure is simpler and safer.
Jerry
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 10:21:49 -0500, Jerry Avins
proclaimed to the world:
From my experience, I suspect that rotor warping is as much a reason
for turning those gas turbines. I've do some work with gas turbines in
both the power generation and marine industries. BTW "turning gear" is
also used in the marine field, more so in the merchant marines than
Military. I know the Brits have some odd names for things too.
My stated reason for jacking the turbine and power transmission system
in a marine propulsion system is only one of several. There may be
more but here are the ones I know of.
1. Drive shaft sag
2. Lubrication
3. Warping of the turbine due to temperature variation.
Lubrication was never a big issue that I knew of other than making
sure that the pumps were on and you had pressure at the bearings
before you started jacking. There were several conditions we keep the
engine in which had to do with the amount of time it took to turn
screws under power. The most "shut down" state was with no oil to the
bearing, no jacking. With a completely cold main engine turbine it
took around a day to warm it up to the point where the throttle valve
was cracked open. I remember a few times where we pushed the edge of
safely when we had to get underway unexpectedly. Shaft sag posed the
possibility of the longest delay. We kept logs of when and how long we
jacked and had a setup to measure the shaft sag. There are times when
it is unavoidable and the shafts had to stay in the same position.
They do not sag all at once of course. I saw a graph of shaft sag once
and remember that sag is a curve with sag decreasing with time. After
several weeks the shafts are as bent as they are going to get. It
takes several weeks of straightening to get underway. This is
unacceptable for a combat ship, so they jack the shaft as a rule, only
letting it set when necessary, such as when in overhaul.
It might be a good idea for me to add that the jacking gear was
sometimes used intermittently.Some ships had two speeds. We might
want to keep the shaft stationary most of the time, so we would jack
the shafts 180 degrees ever few days. The longest shaft is over 200
ft. I was told that this shaft has 2 1/2 twists in it when under full
load. I find this difficult to believe, but the guy who told me was
pretty credible, as he was one of the naval engineers working on
refurbishing the bearing blocks for the shaft. It gives you a better
idea of the flexibility of these shafts.
Keep on questioning things Jerry. It gives me the opportunity to
babble more. :-)
["Followup-To:" header set to rec.crafts.metalworking.]
Once you load the drum up, you'll have more coffee
in toward the center of the drum so your average
moment will decrease. Also in the light load, all
your beans are carried up beyond horizontal on the
vanes before they spill back to the bottom while the
larger load has much more of a rolling effect. You
still have the same amount of beans riding the vanes
up to horizontal, but you also have a mass that's
just rolling around the bottom... it's only rising
from something like 180° to 230°. Obviously, this is all
highly dependent on rpm, and how close that comes to
the sticking speed for that radius. Even if I knew
all the variables, I wouldn't know the math of it.
In this sort of application, I don't think that
doubling the load necessarily requires doubling the
torque though.
My Millenium uses a 3/4 hp motor to rotate 15kg of
beans in 15" drum at 57 rpm, and it's not even a
strain. I have to guess that it does require more
than 1/2 hp though, or they would have cheaped out
on the lighter motor. (The blower motor is 1/2 hp,
for instance)
Purely back of the napkin then, and ignoring other
variables I know about and others I can't imagine,
your drum is .733 the radius of mine x .333 the load of
mine, so should require roughly 1/4 the torque.
I'm going to guess that 1/6 hp ought to be more than
enough @ 60 rpm or 1/12 hp @ 30 rpm...
Paul M wrote
interesting information and
I stand corrected.
I have a collimator that fastens into the bore of my rifle and provides
a target for the scope. I can remove the scope from the barrel and the
barrel from the receiver, then align the scope to the collimator's
projected image at reassembly and it is dead on *provided the barrel is
right-side up and level when the adjustment is made.* The weight of the
barrel and collimator flexes the barrel enough to throw the sight line
off otherwise. My barrel is about two feet long and 3/4" in diameter,
with a 15/64" (.22 cal.) bore, yet it flexes enough to throw the sights
way off is not used gingerly.
I drove a '50 jaguar XK-120 that had such a hard-grabbing clutch that
nobody I knew, not even the dealer's mechanic, could slip the clutch a
bit without chattering vigorously. (That's why it sold cheap.) The drive
shaft was about 1.25" at the clutch spline, tapering uniformly down to
3/4" at the differential. My way to start the caw was sliding my foot
sideways off the pedal so the clutch didn't have time to chatter, and
rely on the drive shaft's windup to absorb the shock. The shaft probably
wound up two turns before the car moved an inch, then unwound, returning
the stored energy to forward momentum. Properly playing the accelerator
avoided oscillation. That car started like a goosed antelope!
Jerry
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 14:52:32 -0500, Jerry Avins
proclaimed to the world:
I hope the car had head rests. I would imagine that having your head
against the rest made the start a bit better. Forget the coffee.
BTW a fine clutch and gearbox is a real joy. Coupled to a beefy engine
it really is a treat. I really should have become a rally racer.
My son has a one year old Mazda 6. I have a 15 yr old Jeep. I can beat
him off the line for the first 50 feet or so. He then smokes me. Torque
is what makes the Jeep jump out ahead.
Al
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 14:16:25 GMT, Al proclaimed
to the world:
In younger years I had a Suzuki 380 motorcycle. It was a hot 2 stroke
back in the 70's. I used to street drag race with it against all the
Hondas around then. The Honda 360 and 550 were really popular four
stroke bikes back then and had more torque than most. The two strokes
were laughed at then but they had a lot of top end. For me to beat a
550 Honda, I had to due a burnout start, hell to get off the line, I
had to do this. On the start the Honda would get maybe twenty feet
ahead while I was leaning over the handle bars, leaving a cloud of
smoke with the tire. Once I got moving a bit, I would lean back and
transfer weight to the tire. The bike would squat, the front wheel
would come up and the tire would stick. It was like being shot from a
cannon. At around 150 ft off the line, I would shoot by the Honda like
it was standing still.
Now I have a old Honda CX500 touring bike with lots of torque. Torque
is better than speed for day after day pleasure in driving.
The Jag belonged to a friend. It had the same weight, engine
displacement, and cylinder count (6) and as my father's '50 Dodge sedan.
Not much similarity beyond that.
Jerry
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