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Industrial Ajax Spring hammer HP?


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Hi all, I am in the process of rebuilding my Ajax Spring hammer. basically the same thing as a Appalachian hammer but industrial built and very heavy. Its a 100 pound Ram on the hammer and im wondering what Horsepower it would need to run properly. Ive scrounged everywhere I could for a clue but dont read czech or german so coming to dead ends. I have a 3 HP 1750 RPM motor but dont know if it will be sufficient or would be pushing the motor too hard.  if anyone knows it would be a real help, even if someone with a 100 pound Bradley or Beaudry Strap or helve hammer could let me know as thats probably the most comparable to my hammer.

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Hi Krush,

I have a Hungarian version of Ajax1 springhammer. Ram weighs officially 30kg / 66 lbs, in reality it weighs 90 lbs. It runs on a 3 HP motor, at 1350 rpm.

I think the #2 needs more power then 3HP. Also on a slower rpm because it hits IRRC 180/min. You can play with the pulley dia of course but the belts can't take anything effectively.

I contacted a friend who uses an Ajax 2, I think he'll give the HP and rpm data.

Bests:

Gergely

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thanks guys for the great responses, id like to know more about them, i found a couple of great items on them but nothing regarding horsepowers. looking forward to having mine running, i figure about 12 more hours of fab and assembly time and i should have it running. not going to use the slack belt that drifts to the inner flywheel setup but make an idler pulley setup for it like bradley upright compact hammers had instead. i will get some pics of the setup this afternoon and post them. in the meantime heres a neat little article I found on them with a little bit of info.

the Lasko and Ajax hammers and one listed in that article are all built in same manner but the Hungarian style hammers look to have some of the drive components built inside of the hammer. I will be looking for a 5 HP 220 motor. I dont want to tax a 3 hp motor or be disappointed with performance.

ajax hammer.pdf

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 The stated horsepower of the motor seems to mean different things  depending on the application.

I have a heavy duty  router thats rated 5 hp and fits in my hand.

My 200# Beaudry  Champion came with the original motor that was also rated at 5 hp and was 20'' in diameter and weighed 380 lbs.

Can anyone explain the difference and how it relates to speed and torque  and power output ?

 

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Marketing is a problem. Their is a big difrence in the peak horsepower an electric motor can produce at start up, horsepower it can produce hours on end and horsepower it can produce just before the magic smoke starts leaking out. The big motor you own and the ones you will buy are rated for continues service wile the add men clame what ever they want realy. 

Metric gets real confusing as they are rated in watts, watts of electricity in and watts of work out. As its not realistic to expect 100% conversion of electricity to torsional rotation. There is a difrence of 1/3-1/2 depending on the mottoes effecency. 

 

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Just received a response from someone in poland i think with the same hammer and his runs off of 2.2KW (2.9 HP i believe) motor at 940 RPM. I will probably go with the 5 HP. I just dont wanna pay hydro guy anymore than necessary but hammer function is most important.

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Electric motors have a cupola of interesting features, one they draw more electricity dependent (this is why they over heat and smoke or trip the breaker if stalled) on load and they acualy produce a partion of the electricity needed to maintain the feild once they are spinning. So a 5 hp motor tho it may be much more expensive to buy will probably not uses much more electricity to spin the same hammer as a 3 hp. It will last a heck of a lot longer tho.

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Hi, 

just received the info: the old style hungarian Ajax 2 (same construction as your Ajax) uses a 3 kW 900 rpm motor. with a 110 mm dia pulley.

Some Hungarian made offspring modells are different, mine for example is not a belt driven but a clutch shaft system one. Still the mechanism is the very same.

Bests:

Gergely

 

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Thank you Gergely, much appreciated. Here are some pics of mine. The Sow block being Wrought was severely impacted and beat to heck so i spun the block 180 degrees to take advantage of the less chipped out area where the die would sit. i dont have a big enough mill or want to pay someone to do the work so i made a bolster cap similar to what I used to have in the hot forging shop working with presses and Hammers that we had. i milled a block to slide in the dovetail that fit just right, ground everything flat as i could with hand grinder using blue and a straight edge which took forever. Then made the table out of 1/2 inch plate thats 22 wide and 16 deep. the table is bolted with rod to the base (all the rods do is keep the plate and die plate assembly down on the sow block. they do not take and compression. on top of the table i have a 1" mild steel plate that is big enough to distribute the pounding across a larger surface of the sow block compared to the old one and the holes are drilled and ready for a 1/2 inch plate the dies will be welded to. With this setup i can service anything that may wear or break moving forward in future. The same system worked well in the Japanese factories i worked in for years so im not concerned it wont hold up. Surprisingly good amount of rebound even though its just mild steel for the sow block table. Have to make a foot treadle and and idler and mount a motor then should be ready to go

Federhammer 2.JPG

Federhammer 3.JPG

Federhammer 4.JPG

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8 hours ago, Charles R. Stevens said:

Marketing is a problem. Their is a big difrence in the peak horsepower an electric motor can produce at start up, horsepower it can produce hours on end and horsepower it can produce just before the magic smoke starts leaking out. The big motor you own and the ones you will buy are rated for continues service wile the add men clame what ever they want realy. 

Some one years ago jokingly told me that its not electricity that makes things go its smoke, and when a motor won"t go anymore its because the smoke has leaked out and you have to take the motor back to an electrical service place and get it filled up with smoke again. Black smoke is more expensive than grey smoke. Electric lights are actually dark suckers and the dark comes out of your toaster and makes your toast dark and the excess dark comes out of the power station chimneys. Electricty is just a way the man takes your money off you ITS A CONSPIROUSY LOL cheers Beaver

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She will definitely get a liberal rub down with Grease before each use. Really fascinating to see how they were built. The design approach could be used in the home built hammers and make them safer and run better. The spring pack is made up of 36 flat springs 1.5” wide side by side and many stacked instead of 3 or 4 large wide thicker ones which will not flex as much and fatigue faster increasing odds of breaking. I thought the bow in the jackshaft was simply to pass material through but found some old documentation that was actually to reduce shock on the bearings and eccentric which makes sense.

thanks again all for your help 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello all, finally got my hands on a rebuilt GE 5 hp 1730 rpm motor for the hammer. I have to build the treadle system from scratch. from all the federhammers ive seen they run the belt on the outside flywheel which is always spinning and then with the treadle it drifts over to the right flywheel and slowly starts the hammer. For my setup I think im going to do it differently, im going to run a jackshaft and slack belt setup so I have the kinetic energy to start the hammer quick and build a brake for the main flywheel to stop the hammer similar to the bradley compact strap hammers that ive seen. I already made a 6 inch idler pulley which will also serve as a counterweight for the treadle, the flywheel is 19" and weighs roughly 60 pounds. i know the machine is supposed to run at 240 BPM. ive rebuilt the LGs in the past and figured out the sizing of pulleys and all that. However I kind of hit a road bump figuring out how to size the jackshaft setup. the motor has a 4" pulley on it and i would like the jackshaft pulley that drives the hammer to be large enough to have the kinetic energy to start it quickly as well as being big enough to provide good contact when pushing the treadle down.  Let me know if you have an equation for figuring out the jackshaft pulley setup. The only things that will not change are the motor speed of 1730 RPM and the hammers flywheel pulley of 19" running at 240 RPM. everything else can be changed

 

also anybody ever used P20 material for hammer dies? Industrial forging environment i came from never used the stuff, always H13 and W360. the fellow i got the hammer from had the dies professionally made but he was from a stamping background. Im a little concerned the material will not handle the temperatures and cant find any information on its ability to handle high temp exposure. Ive picked shrapnel out of my stomach before when large press dies were setup incorrectly and dont want to use the P20 unless i have more information on it.

Thank you Gents

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240 blows per minute divided into 1730 RPM is  7.2 to 1 gear reduction. 

If you chose a jackshaft drive pully of 6"diameter you will have 3.5 to 1.  (19÷6 =3.5)

Since you have a 4" motor pulley and you need to incur an additional reduction of 3.7 to 1 multiply 4" x 3.7 to learn the diameter of the jackshaft driven pulley.

 

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P20 should make fair hammer dies. It heat treats like a spring steel. As long as they aren't too hard they should be great. P20 is used in injection molds were a really high polish is needed, the phosphorus makes for a tighter grain and better finish. I have never seen it in hammer die sized chunks, but if I had some I would give it a try.

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so i have a 5 hp motor now with a 2.25 inch 3 5/8 belt drive on it to the jackshaft driven pulley diameter of 10.5 and the jackshaft driving pulley of 7 inches to the 19 inch flywheel. makes for a 7.36 gear reduction and 235 RPM on the hammer. if my math is correct then should be only 5 rpm under target speed. It will have to do. thanks for the information Artfist!

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