Bridgeport dimension

One of my Dad's favorite stories concerned the time when he worked as plant electrician in a war production facility. If the 300 lb. maintenance chief couldn't pull it off the wall, a conduit was adequately fastened. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

I missed the Staff meeting, but the Memos showed that Gunner Asch wrote on Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:05:03 -0700 in rec.crafts.metalworking :

That's what Liberals pay. They don't want anyone to think them guilty of exploitation of the children in their sweatshops.

Yeah.

pyotr

-- pyotr filipivich "I had just been through hell and must have looked like death warmed over walking into the saloon, because when I asked the bartender whether they served zombies he said, ?Sure, what'll you have?'" from I Hear America Swinging by Peter DeVries

Good idea, I will use it for the frame to make a generator enclosure.

You can do that, and it might be worthwhile if you expect it to be temporary and then recycle the components. The Unistrut, angle brackets, bolts and nuts will get pretty expensive. Buy a few sticks of regular square steel tubing, 1" is probably fine, and just weld up a nice rigid frame.

If you mean an air-cooled gasoline-powered generator, that's not possible. Any enclosure that keeps in sound will keep in heat.

I mean a liquid cooled diesel generator. The main purpose of rthe enclosure will be to keep elements away, sound muffling will be secondary, as this generator is not too loud.

OK, that's quite feasible.

I just happen to live in a land of annual hurricanes, and shake my head at every case of people trying to "improve" cheap generators.

I tried that and arrived to the same sentiment as you. Trying to make a cheap generator into an expensive generator is more expensive than buying an expensive generator outright. Mine is 20 kW, with under 200 hours on the meter. I bought it used. I want to keep it clean, dry and safe from any environmental effects.

That's why you make the cover frame from mild steel tubing, cover it with heavy sheet metal and seam it weathertight, make inner cover panels from sheet aluminum, put fiberglass batt insulation in between and rivet the inner panels on.

With Strut you are paying a lot extra for that slot, if you won't need to change it once finished why pay for a never needed feature?

I'm going to make up a pipe and conduit rack cart, and use Strut for the uprights and material storage crossarms so they can be adjusted later. But the rest of the frame will be recycled light poles or mild tubing, since the frame will never need to be changed or adjusted.

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On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:57:59 -0500, the infamous Richard J Kinch scrawled the following:

Not necessarily, Doc. Two U-shaped, sound-damped frames with a lid on top will take a helluva lot of sound out of the picture while providing ample air exchange.

I'd show you the example over my air compressor but I haven't pulled enough crap^H^H^H^Hgoodies out of my shop to be able to get in there to work just yet. I've seen one in action, though, and they drop at least 6dB with a 3" gap on both sides. That quarters the noise.

Indoors, you can get away with old carpeting on the inside of the OSB/2x2 frame.

Outside, he'll have to use rain/freeze-proof materials. A separate muffler box for the exhaust wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

-- "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." -- Ernest Benn

Enclosing your air compressor is no example. A convection-air-cooled 10 HP gasoline engine puts out huge amounts of waste heat. Mere air exchange is not the issue. If you enclose free convection, you raise the ambient temperature around the fuel tank dangerously, where it can and will boil. You can hardly put them up against a wall.

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:46:29 -0500, the infamous Richard J Kinch scrawled the following:

As I have no experience in this particular application of air-cooled IC engines, I'll bow to your expertise.

I thought the intake air would supplement the convection enough to handle it. Don't the air-cooled types use fans, too, though no radiators? Aim the fan output at one side to increase draw on the other.

Then again, most generators I've seen have radiators and are liquid, not air, cooled.

-- "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." -- Ernest Benn

You can make a sound enclosure around practically anything, but you have to think it through first.

You have to allow access for service, and proper ventilation (fan forced if needed), and insulate against radiant heat from the exhaust on an engine, and get the fuel supply out of the engine enclosure to reduce fire hazards...

A small portable air-cooled generator could be done, but it's a lot of work for the expected end results - and the portable units aren't built for longevity, so you'll have to do it again in a few hundred hours of run time. A compromise would be a unit designed for Motorhome use, made for running enclosed and sound damped.

If you need larger and quiet, they make small factory sound-enclosed units specifically for Residential Backup service from Cummins/Onan, Kohler, Generac, Briggs, etc. Just pour a slab at the side of the house and set it down, run the output and control wiring, connect an external fuel source, and you're done.

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Yes, these rather exemplify the problem, as they spend a significant overhead of their generated power blowing air through the restrictions of their effective sound enclosures.

But you can buy one and put it in service relatively quick and easy, without the level of engineering needed to convert a contractors portable model generator into an enclosed and sound damped unit. And they tend to be built with expected service life in the thousands of hours instead of hundreds.

Just have to make a stand to get it off the ground so the cooling air exhaust and tailpipe can get out. And an outer weather enclosure.

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I've seen many local news stories from that region where they put their generator outside chained to a big tree - but the thieves have bigger bolt cutters, and/or a bigger gun.

They get another, but this time try to rig up an extension on the exhaust pipe so they can have the generator locked up inside the house and run the exhaust out the window - but the whole family gets nailed by the CO because their plumbing job was horrible.

Or the radiant heat from the exhaust lights the window frame or the curtains on fire, and there goes the house.

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