Line Shaft Tour

[turbo7]

With Respect To

[Sanderson Iron]

Thank you Turbo.  

My father-in-law (my FIL, Thomas ) and I have made some pulleys for the shop, and I think it might interest folks to see how we've gone about it.  So far, we've made one split pulley of the Reeves design, and two cone pulleys: one for the horizontal mill, the other for the lathe. These are made of maple and glued with TightBond2.  I have no woodworking tools other than a Disston hand saw (which I bought at a blacksmiths' conference!), so he did the woodwork and I did the metalwork and final turning in the lathe.  The following shows the process to make a Reeves pulley.  It's a lot of work, but when you need a certain size, there's not a lot of choice.  We did this in 1999, before I had accumulated a pile of reserve pulleys.  However, sometimes you still need one you don't have.  At the time of this writing, he's making two more pulleys for me, soon to be used over the new engine. 

I made him a radii turning tool for his bandsaw to cut the inside and the outside curves of the wood.  This has a simple clamp that holds the wood by pulling at a drilled hole.  There are two holes in the fixture: one for the inside radius, the other for the outside radius.  By changing the pin from one hole to the other, both radii may be cut in one set up. The first two pictures should explain this.

The center of the pulley is composed of straight boards with an undersized hole for the bore.  The entire pulley is assembled whole, to be cut in half later. My father-in-law used his press to gently squeeze the layers together.  When the full stack is finished, it is cut in half and drilled for the bolts and alignment pins.  This is a 16" pulley, so I was able to hold it nicely in my 19" lathe to bore the center and turn the outside, with a slight crown of course. 

Joel 

 

[Sanderson Iron]

Cone pulleys are commonly missing from machines, since too often at some point some smart person decided to toss the cone pulley in favor of an electric motor and a gearbox or some other heinous contraption.  It's a shame that happens so much.  Cones are always in pairs, each one meant to be part of the machine, and their dimensions are critical, more so than first meets the eye.  Cones of more than two or three steps are not composed of equal steps.  For example, if the first step has an 8" diameter, the other steps might seem to be two inches larger, measuring 10", 12", 14" and 16".  But this is not true.  If a belt is put on a cone with equally different steps, the belt will be loose on the center steps and tight on the ends.  Therefore, it is necessary to make the center steps of slightly larger diameters.  There are different formula to figure this.  The Complete Practical Machinist by Rose (1894) gives one formula, and the Machinery Handbook gives another slightly more precise formula.  I'm saying this so that if anyone reading this makes a cone pulley, be sure to do the math to figure out the final dimensions, or you may be disappointed.

Again, we made the cone pulleys out of maple.  The wood is screwed to steel plates with hubs on the ends to fasten to the shaft.  On the lathe's cone, the smallest diameter step is steel and serves as that end's hub; its outside diameter was turned last, along with the other steps' diameters.   It's fastened to a plate and screwed to the wood as on the other end.  

I have never had a problem with these pulleys.  However, I will say that dressing tends to build up on wooden pulleys while it doesn't on metal ones.  

The first four images show the five-step cone for the lathe; the remaining images show the three-step cone for the mill. 

[arftist]

Very very nice. Makes my lifetime collection of a few clutches and cone pulleys look pathetic.

One question,  the drive pulleys must be flat? 

The only machine I built specificly with a flat belt I used crowned pulleys at both ends. It works. 

Would it work better if the drive pulley was flat?

Thanks for the photo tour.

I especially like that   you heat the shop with waste heat.

[Sanderson Iron]

On April 9, 2016 at 10:07 AM, arftist said:

One question,  the drive pulleys must be flat? 

The only machine I built specificly with a flat belt I used crowned pulleys at both ends. It works. 

Would it work better if the drive pulley was flat?

 

Sorry it took me so long to answer you.  Been busy.

The only pulleys that shouldn't have a crown are the ones which are opposite a tight and loose pulley.  That is so the belt can move across the pulley as it is shifted from one to the other.  Otherwise a pulley should have a crown.   

A crown keeps the belt in the center of the pulley because the larger diameter at the crown is doing more work, pulling more belt, than the edges are doing.  Imagine if you had two ropes tied to a log at the other end of the yard, and you pulled one rope and your lazy neighbor pulled the other rope more slowly than you; pretty soon the log would be following along behind you and not your lazy neighbor.  That's what happens with a crowned pulley too.  If you have an 1/8" crown on a 30" diameter pulley turning at 200 RPM, the crown is pulling 6.5 feet more belt per minute than the rim is pulling.  That's something, isn't it? 

Unless you understand why a belt centers on a crown, like I just explained, it would seem like a belt would want to climb to the high side when two shafts are not in line, but it does not.  In fact, a belt falls off the close side.  In the first sketch below, I have drawn a pair of shafts and pulleys on which the belt is riding to the right, in the direction of the arrow at the bottom.  This indicates that the shafts are closer on the right (B) than the left (A).  If you move the countershaft farther away on the right, the belt will track in the center of both pulleys.

In the next image I have sketched a pair of pulleys where the belt is riding to the right on one pulley and to the left on the other.  This indicates that the pulleys are the ones which are not in line, not the shaft.  If you slide them towards each other on the shaft, the belt will track properly.  

Shafts are never perfectly in line.  If you could have a pair in perfect parallel, there would be no need for a crown at all, but that's not how things work.  The belt stretches and makes up for the imperfections in the alignment.  (Which is a good reason to use new belts.) The longer the belt, the more forgiving it is, because it has more stretch.  This means that two shafts close together are more trouble to align, so if you have a choice, belt your pulley to a distant shaft rather than to a close one.  I did that with my shaper.  I could have belted it just four feet away, off the first line, but instead I belted it across the room to the north line so I'd have a longer belt that would give less trouble.  

Anybody interested in some clutches I made, or is this getting too nitty-gritty?  

Joel 

[tdaleh]

Keep posting very educational.  Nice shop thank for sharing with us.

[gote]

Please go on. I will most probably never be nvolved with flat belt driven machinery but it is highly interesting to read about it.

[Sanderson Iron]

I just got an email from my father-in-law showing the progress he's making on the new pulley.  This pulley is not going to be split.  Instead it will have a steel plate in its center which will attach to a hub bored and keyed to fit over the clutch above the engine.  (I'll show a picture when it's done.)  The plate will fit inside the larger diameter and will be screwed to the smaller, which is the lower layer in the photo below.  

 

[Sanderson Iron]

I've made four clutches. The first one was built from a brake out of a pickup truck.  Then I made a dog clutch, because I thought it would be simpler (but it wasn't). The last two clutches I made were shoe clutches, made from scratch, which proved to be less trouble than trying to build one out of a brake.  

When a good line shaft clutch is disengaged, no surfaces rub other than the bearing on the shaft.  An automotive clutch with its discs inside cannot be left disengaged forever or the discs will rub themselves thin and fail, not to mention this rubbing adds unwanted friction.  One common type of line shaft clutch is a shoe clutch, or drum clutch.  Usually the shoe is cast iron, a ring, which is spread apart by an arm so it expands against the inside of a drum.  Most of the lathe clutches are of this type, and you'll sometimes see them in pairs, as I mentioned earlier, for forward and reverse (or in the case of my mill, high and low range).  

These are pictures of a clutch I made in 1999 for my horizontal mill.  The shoes are maple.  The drum (not pictured except in the last photo) is screwed to a plate which is mounted to a thick-walled pipe with pressed bronze bearings to fit the countershaft.  (No close ups--sorry.)  In this clutch, the shoes are engaged by two arms (see third picture), one for each shoe, which are moved apart when a cone is slid forward by the fork in the forth picture.  The fork is forged form 1 1/2" square with a 3/4" square shank and 1/2" square forks (no welds of course).  The arms are forged from 1" round with a ball on each end, and then drawn and swaged to 1/2" round between the balls.  The ball joining the rocker attached to the shoe lever is 1" and has a 7/16" square broached hole which fits the square end on the rocker. This rocker is threaded above the square to secure the arm with a nut (visible in the third picture).  The other smaller ball is tapped for the long screw which adjusts the clutch for wear.  I think you can figure out the rest by the pictures.  This clutch is about 10" in diameter.  I made two--identical.  

One thing to note is the arrangement of the set screws.  Two set screws at 30º is the strongest arrangement.  This position offers more power than two set screws inline along the shaft.  So any time you need to hold by set screw only (no key) 30º is the way to go. 

If anybody has any questions about these, I'll try to explain them more.  Too much writing in one post already though. 

Joel Sanderson

[aplater]

Thanks Joel, the information you're sharing is truly inspiring.  

I have shared some pictures of a mostly intact, abandoned and falling down line shaft shop that I am trying to save from being scrapped as well as a pic of my 2 hammers and a newly acquired punch press which I am still trying to find information about.

The line shaft shop was powered by an electric motor that was powered by the towns generator.  I am really hoping that I can make a deal on the contents of the shop and keep it out of the scrap yard.

Really appreciating the information,

Adam 

[Forging Carver]

Wow, this is really cool! I love how the outside looks like a cool old rugged barn, and then the inside is all refurbished with that nice mix of stone and wood.

 

Now here's a question you must get asked a lot. How much did that engine cost you?

[notownkid]

what do you need to know on the punch press.  My  brother in law had a shop with 20 or so different sizes his family ran for years.  Unfortunately about half were scrapped when he sold the shop.   his old lathe looked about like yours as well. but had been converted to an electric motors something along.

[Sanderson Iron]

If I may say so Adam, it's an OBI  (Open Back Incline), or your Mayer is a trip hammer.  Sometimes a name can limit how you perceive it.  One nice feature on that type of press is that there is a decent hole through the table beneath the ram.  You can work through it from either direction--for catching drops, for bending through from above or for working longer bars from below.  Let's say you want to make a long bolt, so you forge a ball and then draw the shank down to a third the diameter.  You can pass it up through the table of the press, clamp the ball in a holder and upset it with any impression you can imagine.  Each head will be the same, because you have already established the volume with your ball and your press will always make the same stroke and return without drifting to the side.  That's tougher with my press, because the table is different.  Plus, the OBI tilts so you don't have to work vertically if you don't want to.  Now how long can your bar be?  It can come all the way to my house if you want it to. Try that trick with a hammer; you can (and I have) with a bridge, but it's a lot more awkward and not nearly as consistent. 

I recently received an email with pictures of the Ford factory in 1916.  In the press room there is an OBI running off the line shaft.  These things go back a ways. 

Those are some nice clutches in that shop.  It'd be well worth buying them if you can.  Do you know what machine the two-step cone went to?  Is it still there?

13 hours ago, Forging Carver said:

Now here's a question you must get asked a lot. How much did that engine cost you?

I paid $2200 for it in 1999, which probably was too much.   I thought it was in better condition.  As it turned out, I had to have the crank ground, and I had to pour all new bearings, grind the valve and so on.  But it had the governor with it, which is missing on the bulk of Reids.  I needed that, of course.  It's been a very good engine since I rebuilt it properly and learned its quirks.  It also has more than enough power for anything I can put on it.  Yesterday my wife was running the universal grinder all day while simultaneously keeping the Rockford drilling 1 5/64" holes; at the same time I was running the sheer and the shaper, which was making 1/4" cuts 14" long (for six hours straight); on top of that, the dynamo was generating 25 amps.  That's five machines, and it didn't even care.  It kept us warm besides.  The drive belt stretches a little more and the lights have a wee bit more flicker is all you can tell when she's pulling a steady load.  750 cubic inches takes life seriously. 

Joel

 

[aplater]

I am just not sure of the working capacity of this OBI Punch Press, I cant find any literature about it. I want to make sure I don't jam it up and break it,  I will just start out easy and do some testing.

 

There wasn't a machine under the two step pulley when I got in the shop,  though there are 2 Southbend lathes,  1 shaper, 1 mid size drill press and 1 pedestal grinder as well as a large, about 24"x120" lathe.  I didn't get to spend much time rooting through the place,  just enough time to get excited about it

[Sanderson Iron]

On April 14, 2016 at 0:01 PM, aplater said:

I am just not sure of the working capacity of this OBI Punch Press, I cant find any literature about it. I want to make sure I don't jam it up and break it,  I will just start out easy and do some testing.

 

 

I cannot seem to lay my hands on the information to answer this, Aplater.  Somewhere, in an old book I have a formula telling the power of a press based on its flywheel size and another based on its shaft size.  I don't know why I can't find it.  I'll keep looking for you.  The thing is, that won't answer your question on a practical level anyway, because you don't know how much power it takes to move hot iron anyway, and there are few sources to answer that for you.  Basically, you have to experiment and do some testing, like you said.  If you start with really open dies (like fullers, lining tools and whatnot) you'll get a feel for it so you can move on from there.  

 

 

[Black Frog]

Joel!

It was a such a pleasure when Aaron and I got to visit your shop last year!!

I took some video of your shop in action, but I don't want to post them without your permission.  If that's ok, I'll put links on here for all to see.

Joel's shop is jaw-droppingly cool to see in action.  As cool as it is in the pictures shown, it is even more amazing to see it all going.  The video shows things in action, but in person it is even more impressive.  I could (and did) spend hours just looking at everything.  The drives, the machines, the tooling, and the work performed, all truly amazing.  As an engineer and machinist for my day job, and forging on nights and weekends, my day spent at Joel's shop was just like visiting Santa's workshop to a wide-eyed kid....  

 

[CoyoteGear]

Amazing shop. I love the pulleys and wheels and belts overhead. I don't know how to describe it other than steampunk and that's not the really the word I want. It's amazing and I love that old world engineering. Thank you for the pictures. One day I hope to have a shop that's just half that impressive and I'll be a happy camper!

[Sanderson Iron]

On April 22, 2016 at 0:05 PM, Black Frog said:

Joel!

It was a such a pleasure when Aaron and I got to visit your shop last year!!

I took some video of your shop in action, but I don't want to post them without your permission.  If that's ok, I'll put links on here for all to see.

 

Thank you, Black Frog. I had fun that day too.  I hope you come back some time.  Of course you may post anything you want.  (Well, good things anyway. ) I wanted to show a video I have on U-tube showing my wife making arches on the shaper, since it has shots of the overhead drive, hot iron and everything, but as soon as I pasted the link here, it tried to fill the window.  I'm guessing it was trying to load it.  Dunno though.  Anyway, if you know how to do it, please tell me so that I can put that video up too.  It's called Working Hot Metal with a Shaper or something like that.  

And thank you, too, Coyote Gear.  I appreciate the compliment.  It's just a shop though.  Line shafts used to be common, and this is nothing compared to what was.  Sad, really, to think that's gone now.  

I'm sorry I haven't done more on this lately, everybody.  I've been meaning to post more pictures of clutches I've made, but I had a job come in the shop that had to have a lot of overtime, so I wasn't able to type as much as otherwise.  It's finished and on its way to California now tho, so I should be back on this soon.  

Joel

[Sanderson Iron]

Did I say "overtime?"  What a dork.  Like I have a timed job or something. I think it'd be "extra time" or "too much time."  Whatever.

Here's another clutch I made.  This is the one I made from a drum brake out of a pickup.  Hopefully these pictures will give ideas to someone who might need to make one.  

The first picture shows the clutch assembled, less the pulley, which will fit to the right of the drum.  There's a bronze bearing pressed into it.  (Mistake, but I did it years ago.)  On the left side is the cone which moves the arm to engage the shoes inside.  This arm is visible in the second picture.  The cone needs to spin freely on the shaft so that the arm and cone move together once engaged.  There will be a yoke in the groove on the cone which will connect to the handle (no picture) to engage it.

The last picture shows the inside with the brake shoes pivoted on the bottom.  The arm in the second picture connects to a short shaft which rotates, spreading the shoes by means of the short S-shaped parts on top. The hub in the center is really too small for this size shaft, but I adapted it from its original position which was on a smaller shaft.  I think it'll work.  We'll see.  It also still needs to be faced, to remove that sharp projection at its bore. 

Like I said earlier, I don't think I saved much by starting with a brake.  It was just as simple making one from scratch.  

Joel

[Black Frog]

hmmm... doesn't seem to allow me to post a YouTube link either...

Here's a workaround.  If you copy and paste the links below into your browser bar and remove the space after the https: and before the // then it will link to the videos, Part 1 and Part 2.

https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=gREo5WJQDX8

https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkR_rC9J0yo

Joel I also linked these vids to other blacksmithing pages.  Fantastic stuff!!  

 

[notownkid]

On ‎4‎/‎13‎/‎2016 at 0:06 PM, aplater said:

a newly acquired punch press which I am still trying to find information about.

I asked my brother in law what the size of this press might be he said 35-45 tons would be his est.  He owned and operated a shop with many presses of different sizes.  He had a 65 ton one we had to disassemble to move into the scrap dumpster. 

[Sanderson Iron]

Here is something which I think is very important for a line shaft.  It might seem kinda nerdy and unnecessary, but it has proven invaluable to me; and that is keeping a book of maps of all the machines and their accompanying countershafts and belts, showing each shaft's speed and usually each belt's horsepower.  I call these Line Shaft Maps.  My book is a ring binder.  If I want to tie into a countershaft, I can look up its speed easily without climbing around with a speed indicator or redoing all the math of the pulleys. (In the second and third pictures, you can see where I connected the Little GIant to the press's third shaft.)  If I want to know how fast a machine is running (let's say a grinder, for replacing a stone) I can just look it up.  By showing the belts' horsepower, if a belt is slipping I can figure out which one is underpowered.  Where there are gear boxes, I indicate the ratio on the map as well.  I have a map for every machine in the shop.

Of course, any machine with a cone pulley or different gears (lathe, mills etc.) has a tag nearby showing each speed. 

Joel

  

[Sanderson Iron]

I suppose everyone here knows about speed indicators, but just in case, here are three different kinds.  The first pictured is a Starrett, the second, a Jaquet and the third is a Hasler.  Each one is held against the end of the shaft to show the speed the shaft is turning.  With shafts that have a center hole, the metal point is held in the hole; if there is no hole, a rubber foot is put over the point, and that is held to the shaft.  The Hasler and Jaquet also have rubber wheels for holding against the side of a shaft where the end is not accessible.  This measures the feet per minute.

The Starret indicator is common and can be picked up for very little money.  Each revolution of the dial is 100 revolutions of the point.  You hold it against the shaft and look at your watch, count the revolutions the dial makes, then remove the indicator from the shaft and read the dial, adding the reading to the number of revolutions you counted.  It's best to have someone else look at their watch while you hold the indicator, especially if you're balancing on a wobbly step ladder. 

The Jaquet has two dials: one is a stop watch, the other the speed indicator.  There are three dials reading 1,000, 100 and 1 revolutions.  It is held to the shaft, and a trigger releases the mechanism to begin counting.  It's very easy to use alone. 

The Hasler is the simplest to use.  These come in high and low speed.  This is a high speed.  With these, there are two buttons; one returns the dial to zero; the other starts the movement.  Just hold the point to the shaft, release the second button, and the arm moves until it reaches the speed of the shaft and then quits, even as you continue holding it.  It is very simple to read.  These are fairly common on Ebay. 

 

[Jim Coke]

Greetings Joel

      A few more from my inventory.. The oldest is not marked but I am sure it is from the early 1900s . 

Forge on and make beautiful things. 

Jim

[Sanderson Iron]

Oh wow, Jim.  That old one is perdy!  I like it.  I'm guessing the first one is digital?  I thought there might be some new versions out there, but only old things stick to me somehow.  Thank you for showing us.