[TheForge] A Balancing act

[Dan Brewer]

Do a thoural cleanning first.  If you have the ability I would also clean
out the bearings.  ATF is a 5 wt oil that is a high detergent.  I would
flush out the bearings with carb cleanner and then put some ATF on the
bearings.  Check to see if there is an oil resivor on the top of the
bearing.  Or a small ball .  If you can press down on the ball that is
where the oil goes in.  Or it might just be time to replace them.

On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 1:34 PM, Steve Bloom <sabloom at ironflower.com> wrote:

> On 3/5/2015 9:55 AM, CGRAF wrote:
>
>> How sudden was this?
>>  How exactly is the motor power transferred to the blower?
>>
> It's been a slowly growing concern -- it was never quiet but 'rattling' is
> fairly new or maybe I'm just hearing it more since I have been teaching a
> bit and that means less earplug time.
>
> The unit is an old large (18" snail) champion blower with ~10" diameter
> blades propeller running on a 0.75" keyed shaft.  The shaft is ~ 18" long
> with one pillow block almost touching the side of blower and the other ~
> 12" away. A pulley is midway between the blocks and talking to a 1 HP 120V
> motor. The ratio of the pulleys and the motor's speed generates ~ 3400
> rpm.  Run by itself, the motor is virtually silent. The shaft appears to be
> straight (based on spinning it on a lathe) and hand spinning the unit is
> easy - no resistance and no sound (of course, that's at maybe 60 rpm).  The
> sound is present with or without the "snail" bolted in place.  The fan has
> obviously been balanced in the past, i.e. globs of weld/braze on some of
> the fan blades.  Immediate 'cure' is to ignore it or slow the rpm down.
> Eventual solution could be to beef up the shaft (1.25" shaft turned down to
> 0.75"), opening the access port in the backing plate for the larger shaft,
> and replace the pillow blocks - which will probably mean redoing the mount
> system.   The obvious first step is to dynamically balance the fan - if I
> can figure out a reasonable procedure.
>
> I've posted a few images at ironflower.com/ironwork/blower.pdf
>
>
> Steve
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