Made a deal for a big (to me) hammer today. 165lb.

[Vinito]

Well I'm pretty stoked. Just got back from looking at and making a deal for a power hammer.

I was keeping my ear to the ground for a larger hammer. I have a 30lb Anyang, which has been fantastic. But of course, as one does, a growing jones took root and the desire for a little larger one got real for me. I figured for my shop and electrical arrangement, an 80lb or possibly 110lb hammer would be nice. Of course these things just don't drop in your lap though... except that this one kinda did! I figured if I got one, it would almost certainly involve a road trip and motel stays and such. But lo and behold, one came up within a half-hour drive.

The wrinkle is that it's significantly larger than I though worth considering, but looked into it and figured out that I can indeed alter things enough to suit the 165lb hammer on which I decided to pull the trigger.

It's essentially an otherwise labeled Anyang. Certainly that same style and casting. It will be a week or two before I move it here and place it, but maybe that means in the meantime I can work out the electrical upgrades I need to do to suit the thing.

So.... apologies in advance to my neighbors. But hey, the bigger hammer means their knick-knacks & silverware get disturbed for a shorter portion of their day, right?

So I'm still a relative newbie to this whole thing so I feel quite fortunate this has come my way. I'm certainly still on the very low end of the skill scale. But I'm also old enough that minimizing the shock to my joints & bones of striking sledges is definitely worth significant concern too, so I feel absolutely zero guilt in my luck.

I'll post back with more entertaining content once things start happening. Should be getting it in place in a couple weeks. If I do some electrical stuff beforehand, I'll post about that too. Honestly, I may (likely) have some questions and hope you all can help me through that part.

The hammer is 10hp 3-phase and I have a lathe and mill which also use 3-phase. So I am leaning strongly toward investing in a rotary phase converter to run all that. The reality around here is that I will never be running more than one of these machines simultaneously, so probably just a 10hp rated rotary converter will probably do, but give me input if you think I'm off track. I plan to phone America Rotary for advice on this too since I plan to buy the RPC from them.

Anyways, it's been a good day today.

[Frosty]

You need to talk to an electrical engineer locally, not ask important questions of strangers on the  internet. Seriously the laws regulations and codes sometimes change by neighborhood let alone county, state, etc. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Vinito]

To be clear, I'm not looking for answers to code compliance questions. There are lots of guys with experience running machinery with a rotary phase converter and just want to pick their experienced brains for even anecdotal info regarding what they may have run into in their histories. I guess all I'm wondering at the moment is whether anyone has made a similar decision in the past (matching an RPC to suit their largest load) and either found that to  suit their needs well or regretted that decision because expectation clashed with reality.

Sorry for the confusion but thanks for the reply & input anyway Frosty.

[Rojo Pedro]

Can't wait to see some pics. What kind of base will you need to set it on?

[Vinito]

Yeah, I can hardly wait until the day I get to TAKE some pics. I'll try & make them good.

The seller had the hammer on a kind of sandwich of one layer of thick rubber between two layers of planks. This comes with the hammer and the base of the hammer is anchored to this base sandwich thing but not to the concrete floor. It's about 5' or so square by about 4" thick total, and looks like it would significantly spread out the load. I didn't ask him about his concrete floor, but it looked like yer standard 4" slab though I could be mistaken. I suppose a standard 40' x 60' building like his might have 6" concrete too. Maybe you guys know which is more typical for that kind of structure? At any rate, during the running of it today, there was certainly no sign of the thing moving or rocking at all, so that sammich must be doing some good stuff.

In my case it will temporarily be in my garage on a concrete floor (about 5" thick), but will be moved next summer to a barn I'm building, so I'll be able to pour a nice thick isolated pad for it there.

BTW, regarding the RPC question... the seller is feeding his with a 15hp RPC and it handled it fine for what little time we were there. And when I mentioned 10hp above, what I meant is whatever size RPC would suit the 10hp motor. I guess it just my non-trusting nature, but though I will be discussing this with the RPC vendor, I feel I can only give them some less-than-100% belief that they will give me an honest recommendation rather than try to upsell me on something that's larger than I need. You know the drill. That's why I like to ask here too because even if you're not an expert, I'm just in the "soaking up data points" phase of this decision today so I'll be weighing out whatever I can take in at this point. Any input is welcome.

Thanks

[LarryFahnoe]

Frosty provides good advice which is consistent with this forum's emphasis on safety, not just for the person who has asked the question, but for others that stumble upon the thread years later.

Another source of good information on 3-phase conversion is at the Practical Machinist in the Transformers, Phase Converters and VFD section.

That said, you asked about experiences and general input. For my own shop I feed all my 3-phase machines from a centrally wired 10HP Phase Perfect which is a digital phase converter rather than an RPC. I sized it to be larger than any one of the loads & like you tend to only be using one machine at a time; my largest load is also a hammer but with a 7.5HP motor. I don't think the 15HP RPC to feed a 10HP hammer sounds out of line. Aside from proper wiring and circuit protection, the sizing question is probably best answered by how the hammer starts & the load it draws as a result. If it has a start or idle setting and a run setting it would likely have a lower starting load than if it did not. I'd have a pic of the motor's nameplate handy for the call to the RPC vendor.

--Larry

[Mike BR]

Maybe someone here has experience running equipment like that on VFDs, but it looks like 10HP units are now available for a few hundred dollars.  10 HP is already quite a power draw on 220V single phase (if that's what you have), and you have to add the rotary converter motor on top of that.  A VFD should require less total current, and might save you on wiring.

[Vinito]

Thanks guys. Good points.

I agree that Frosty's safety concern is valid and worth expressing in the thread, both to me and posterity. I mean he doesn't know me and should assume that I may be blindly driving a safety train off a cliff. I would do the same. I work at a power plant and I'm so used to having a couple dozen skilled electricians at arm's reach that I forget to consider my situation is certainly not normal. These guys would be great for making sure my wiring is safe and up to the task, but they aren't necessarily doing home shop stuff and thinking through the compromises we lowly normies face. But I will be asking around at work too.

Larry, this hammer does have a "run" and "idle" setting lever. I guess that means the weight of the compressor cylinder, linkage and pulley is still added to the starting load but still helps significantly. Good point on the motor nameplate and I'll see what I can do about that before calling around. And I'll look at the Phase Perfect stuff and see what I can learn about it.

I agree with you Mike on the VFD possibility, and I may yet go that route in the end. The reason I'm leaning toward an RPC is that I also have a lathe and mill in the same room, the mill already having a mechanical variable speed arrangement and the lathe having three motors on it (spindle motor + coolant motor and feed motor). The lathe is an almost finished restoration project (not been powered up yet) which is why it hasn't been a problem thus far, and the mill just has a small VFD running it up to now (just have it set to fixed 60Hz since variable speed unneeded). So I was thinking an RPC might be a good solution to what's evolving in my shop. Having said that, I can solve my lathe power issue by other means and maybe a suitable VFD would suit the hammer for less money, especially since it's probably just a temporary setup for a while. Hmmm. I have some thinking & researching to do.

Thanks a ton for the input guys.

[Frosty]

Okay, so now we have another sparky to bounce electrical questions off.  When I have electrical questions I tap one of the sparkies here to learn what questions to ask the local electricians. 

My limit is wiring a 110v wall outlet or switch.

What I know about 3 phase is it would cost about 2x what the house and land cost to get it to the pole and another several grand to get the shop inspected and hooked up.

Means I don't intend to get any 3 phase tools, converter or not.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Vinito]

Yeah I feel ya Frosty. I currently have eight 3-phase machines here total and would LOVE to have 3-ph run right to my house, but it's a prohibitive fortune even if you could convince them to do it, which is a whole 'nuther matter. Fortunately, years ago I set up a small rotary in a separate building for the stuff in there and have 3 or 4 VFD's on other individual things. The small rotary is plenty for those machines but they need much less than this hammer does, thus my consideration of buying another one. The other VFD's I've installed are more for wanting variable speed than just conversion (other than that one mill I spoke of earlier).

But I am not quite a sparky. I am a machinist at the plant so more aligned with the mechanical stuff. But I do have several electricians "on retainer" so I could possibly relay questions & replies.

BTW, I am now leaning more toward the VFD route on this hammer IF I can verify that it can handle the current it will draw. The seller sent me a photo of the motor info plate so I'm gonna pick the brains of a couple sparkies at the plant and do some research of my own. Of course if I find one with suitable specs, I'll need to fab up a decent enclosure arrangement to keep out the dirt and vibrations while still allowing adequate cooling of the unit. I wouldn't run a typical VFD without some beefing up of the enclosure - just asking for premature failure if a guy did that.

[Frosty]

This is a self contained power hammer like an Anyang, yes? It's been a while since I ran a self contained but all of them had exquisite control of speed and power with the treadle. I spent some time using a 40lb. Kuhn up here. On a trip down south, Bob Bergman's 500lb, fluid drive but I can't remember the maker at the moment a TBI memory thing. Anyway, Bob's hammer was a beast I struck a single blow on dull red 1" square on flat dies and it reduced the bar to butter knife thick say around 16ga. 

Right after my little experiment Bob stood a penny on edge on the bottom die and eased the tup down and held it tightly enough I couldn't tap it off with a ruler, without bending it.

No hammer he had in his shop had any kind of motor speed control it was all in the treadle or the hammer driver's lever. 

Have you or anyone out there seen a manufactured power hammer with a motor speed control? 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Vinito]

Yeah, this is basically an Anyang self-contained with a different name, and it does indeed have very nice progressive control. I was lucky enough to get a 33lb Anyang a couple years ago and have become fairly decent at controlling it since then.

While I haven't seen a manufactured hammer with speed control designed into it, I have seen a couple guys attach a VFD to a self-contained hammer and used the variable speed, but personally I don't see much of a point to it other than some guys might have a druther regarding maybe the frequency of the whacks. Like you pointed out, you get such nice control with these already. I guess a bit of a variable speed range wouldn't hurt (within reeason), but all the ones I've seen in videos or whatever, even the cheapest clones, appear to have dang good control designed into them. Admittedly, I am extremely inexperienced and mostly hoping to raise that to "kinda inexperienced" one of these days so FWIW.

[Vinito]

Well it has arrived. Hauled it home today and lifted it off the trailer with my telehandler, and was surprised the machine would lift such a heavy load. The base was different than I thought. It's a 1" plate with 1" rubber atop that then capped with 2" wood planks. I figure the hammer plus the base (that plate adds 1K or so) is around 7200 lbs. if the specs from the manual are correct.

So new plan as well. I set it on a concrete pad in front of a shed, so next weekend I plan to build an extension around it. This solves a couple problems, but mainly keeps me from being so cramped. But it will be nice to have one area segregated for the blacksmithing. I have a move in my future in about a year (with a much larger shop), so the certain mission creep I'm in the middle of will have more space to fit into once that happens

It's really great to know that my telehandler is powerful enough so moving the machinery won't be a big deal. This hammer is double the weight of my heaviest other machines.

Anyways, today is one of the good ones.

[Frosty]

Kind of dwarfs your garage/shop doesn't it? Having to expand the shop to cover the new tool is so Blacksmitherly I nominate you the definitive example of our craft. Until a better example speaks up that is. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Vinito]

Because it will take some time for me to make the siding I need to match the old shed, I tucked it inside my other shop so it will a) be out of the weather and b) I can work on the phase conversion options until I achieve success running the thing reliably. I'll pull it back out to place it in the previous location once I am set up to build the extension quickly. The extension will also function as a dedicated blacksmithing area too, which I'm looking forward to setting up.

I like looking at progress pics, so I'll assume some of you feel similar. Behold the pics. One is before and the other two are after a wet-gas-rag bath. Just a once-over, but I can see more what I've got here and I think I like what I see.

By the way and a little more specific, this is a Striker brand hammer 75Kg.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

When it's up & running it sure should get the job done.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.~ Semper Paratus

[Vinito]

I gave the hammer a go from a 10hp VFD. It almost works, but I think the VFD just doesn't have enough poop to do it quite right.

I gave it a 10 second ramp up time and that seems to have worked. No signs of any kind of amperage spike problem, and it gets up to speed, while in idle of course.

However, once I engage the ram, it slows the thing down significantly, which I really don't even understand as it seems like the VFD sending out 60Hz is what it's doing for sure, yet the hammer's motor gradually slows down between 10% and 40%. Maybe the motor is just getting out of sync and just doing the best that it can with the phases that are being sent to it.

I will say that slathering a little oil to the ram while it was down and also letting it warm up for a while does lessen the bogging problem, but not completely. And the biggest problem is that when I fully engage the ram (pedal down quick and hard), it struggles and doesn't hit very well, i.e. not nearly as hard as it did on the seller's RPC. It's a little like having half the hammer it could be, so that just won't do.

So I guess I am at the point where I probably could kind of use the thing somewhat, but it's probably not doing the motor any good if I did.

Thus I'm probably looking at investing in a RPC. The folks at American Rotary recommended either an ADX25 or ADX30. There's a pretty large price jump between the two, and I saw the machine running on a basic 15HP rpc at the seller's shop which ran it just fine. So for the moment, I'm pretty sure I'll be ordering an ADX25 RPC from American Rotary this week.

So add around $3K to the price of the hammer, but the RPC is an upgrade in both power and quality from my existing one. Honestly, my existing one is a bit of a hack job to begin with, so it might be nice to remove it from my list of substandard stuff anyway. Point is, the new RPC will be spread amongst 7 other machines besides this hammer, so can't quite focus all the blame on it.

Having said all that, it was pretty cool spinning up the hammer and testing it out today in my own home shop regardless. All in all, it's a step forward.

Anybody need a video? I'm a little beat for the day, but could throw something together if you really want to see it.

[Vinito]

I got to thinking about the weirdness of the bogging down with the VFD and my stupidity was revealed yet again.

I thought "maybe it could be due to slipping belts?" I checked them and they were indeed significantly loose. So I snugged them up and tried it again.

I'll be danged, darned and a monkey's uncle. That actually worked!! Holy Carp.

The hammer still starts up slow and easy, and now there's zero bogging when the ram is engaged, and a quick, hard step on the pedal bar and WHAM! I do believe this is more what was intended.

I guess the motor shifted a little in transit or something and loosened the belts.

I do need to so some shimming as the thing rocks pretty bad. My current floor is known to be very non-planar. I think once I get that done, and several fiddly odds & ends I've been working on, i.e. missing screws, die fit-up issues, etc. - Oh yeah, did I mention that the hammer came with four additional die sets? Anyway, I tried one and it's way different width in the dovetail, so I need to either shave them all to match or make some matching taper gibs or something. Anyways, just fiddly stuff now.

[Vinito]

Made a start-up video. Check near the end and hear that the machine is doing a "tap-miss-tap-miss" kind of thing. I've seen that this is a "thing" on some hammers and I hope you can tell me if a) this is just standard operation and run with it or b) this is a possibly annoying control issue that can be adjusted out.

Just generally, I'm new to this thing, it is a fine line to make it occur (thus far) and I would think that I can just get used to it if that's what people do through this phenomenon.

Anyway, hope this video is at least somewhat interesting to some of you guys.

YouTube video link:

[swedefiddle]

Good Morning,

It sounds normal to me. Looks like you have good control for light blows. What you are hearing is the compressor piston venting to atmosphere, when you do not have your foot on the pedal.

I think what you are calling the 'Tap, miss, Tap, is because you were tapping VERY LIGHT. Make sure the air system is well oiled, that is the 'Life Blood'.

Neil

[Frosty]

Running it light on the treadle means short fast strokes of the tup that are venting the excess air from the master to atmosphere. There is only a little internal bypass which prevents the master  from drawing vacuum on the retreating side of the piston.

With the treadle fully depressed it strikes like the monster it is largely because that's where it's designed to be most efficient.

I don't hear anything wrong. Next time  you fire it up try doing the same forging as in the video on 1 1/4" sq. and enjoy that beauty in her element.

Ah HAH! Neil and I are writing simultaneously. Morning Neil.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Vinito]

Thanks for the good news. Yeah, it seems to function very well as far as I can tell. I just don't know what I don't know, thus the question. I was indeed tapping very lightly when it was doing the "tap, miss, tap" thing. 

I wanted to try some bigger stock, but wasn't easy at-hand. I really want to try smashing & upsetting some large stuff soon. I have a fair amount of spare  2" square stock. That might be the perfect victim for a good thwacking if I can get it hot enough in my little forge. A forge upgrade is also in the works, but it's early stages so far.

Side tangent: my forge upgrade design has evolved a lot over the past week or so. Out of the gate is was going to be 24" long, but practicality and better sense has slowly been creeping in and it's down to 14" max length and ribbon burner (originally 12" long) might be 6" long and 8" at most. I'm glad I didn't just dive in. Letting a design evolve in my head seems to always end up much improved before I touch fabrication of the first piece of anything. I guess it pays to not be in a big hurry.

[Frosty]

Ayup, the only thing rushing into a build or buy is make mistakes permanent more quickly.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Vinito]

First, much apologies for this verbose post. Sincerely! anyways...

Had our first "Forge Friday" with the new functioning hammer. It was a success that I'm very pleased with, but not 100%. There are three problems that I'm aware of so far. Fortunately I am a machinist and can address them. If a guy had a different profession, these problems would be much more disappointing. Not that I'm not disappointed, but much less than if my options were fewer.

1) the lower anvil (called the "anvil cushion" in the manual) is acting... strange. Not with the hammering, but rather with die alignment. It was missing the retaining pin (centered underneath inside the slot in the die), so I machined one. Once inserted, the lower die was misaligned (offset) lengthwise from the upper die by about 3/8". At least now I know why the alignment pin was lost in the first place. Measuring things, I verified that the spacing of features appeared to be centered on themselves as they should be, i.e. both on the dies and the anvil. Yesterday after using the hammer for a while, the offset had reduced to more like 1/8" which is just odd and I haven't yet looked into it enough to know how this has shifted. It seems obvious that somehow the anvil must be moving, but I don't know enough to know how that is even possible. I'm halfway hoping that the bore the anvil (cushion) is fitted to has a fair amount of gap which I can address. Also, I'm assuming (hoping) that in the original manufacture of the hammer, the ram and anvil bores were kind of "line bored" to be located on the same line axis. I did verify that the casting is not cracked or anything (fortunately).

2) Stacked upon this, the dovetail for the dies is dorked up significantly. The bottom face seems decent, but the fixed side is pretty beat and also doesn't match the side of the dies well at all (7° spec in the drawings). This of course leads to the die working itself loose fairly quickly in operation as the fit of the dovetail/key is just not good. Way less than even 50% contact bearing. Seems my solution to this will be removing the anvil, building up material and machining it back to where it fits well again. Not a trivial job, but it's in my wheelhouse so I can do it.

3) related to this but somewhat separate, the dies themselves vary in spec. or in fit I guess. The flat die is almost 1mm (.040") narrower than the other 4 sets of dies that came with the machine, which is enough that the key doesn't even begin to fit the gap of the other dies. The crate of 4 other dies all seem to match each other fairly well, so it's the flat die that's out of spec. The flat die is also bungled up on both the dovetail sides and bottom and top faces, so it could use a complete tidying up. The other dies have seen little to no use and all seem to be in good shape as well as matching in dimensions.

So my plan of attack is:

1) inspect further and take careful measurements 2) remove the lower anvil and inspect deeper both the die slot and the fit into the casting bore, possibly machine soft spacer ring to help alignment 3) close inspection and measurement of all dies 4) document all measured dimensions for analysis 5) repair what's necessary for as close as possible to 100% contact bearing of dies to dovetail fit 6) maybe manufacture new taper key to allow for use of other dies if necessary

So it's a fair amount of work, eh? This tells me another thing, i.e. the rumors I've heard of this hammer having 100hrs of use are boldface wrong. This kind of damage/wear is almost impossible with 100hrs of operation. Not a huge deal in some ways, but at least another data point for my own records.

Sooo, the good news - Upper die fit is pretty dang good. No problems there at all in both appearance and function of fit. The 7.5Kw VFD seems to drive the machine just fine. Big "Yaaay" in my opinion which saved my close to $3K compared to the remaining other solution. The hammer does indeed have (to me) amazing power to smash. Also it's painted green, so I may get out some paint and name-tag "Hulk" on it somewhere. Control is very good - basically exactly what you would want & expect out of a self-contained like this. So all told, I remain pleased to have acquired the hammer.

Let me know what you think.

[Frosty]

The observed damage to the flat die and dovetails as opposed to the other bottom dies could be as simple as the owner/operator not giving the key a tap when it worked loose. A loose bottom die will bugger up lots of connected components too say the alignment pin under the "sow block."

That being the block that screws down to the hammer and has the dovetails to receive the dies. I certainly could have "sow block" wrong, I've seen it used in several ways by the manufacturer and I haven't spent much time looking at Chambersburg hammers. The patent papers are excellent places to find detailed info about things like power hammers.

Frosty The Lucky.