Dismantling a Rapid E outsole stitcher machine head from table for transport - HOW?!

[Vinculus]

So I am looking to get an old Rapid E outsole stitcher from a friend of mine. Problem is, I live in an apartment up a single curved flight of stairs. I don't think there's any way to get enough manpower to lift and carry the whole 620+lb. thing in one single pice up the stairs.

My friend tells me it's possible to separate the machine head from the table for easier transport. Has anyone of you ever done this before, how hard is it - and is it worth it at all? I'm basically getting the machine for free since she's having such a hard time selling it, although it's been serviced and adjusted. I currently don't have a three-phase outlet to power the machine, but it will mainly be "in storage" at my place and I'll hand crank it for a while until we move to a bigger place. In the meanwhile I'm used to hand stitching outsoles on my shoes and boots anyway, and this is an investment for the future.

Thoughts? Advice? Step-by-step guides? Anything is welcome. The only thing I know is I can't bear the fact that the machine is currently sitting outside under a tarp when winter is coming.

[mikesc]

First of all, are you sure that your apartment floor can take the weight of the machine concentrated into the area of its "footprint" ?
( unless the floor is made of steel reinforced concrete, it may not be able to support the weight, and you could find it suddenly again at ground level )

Secondly, can your stairs take the weight ? even split some of the parts may weigh one or two hundred pounds, two hundred pounds carried by two strong guys means that each of them will probably have a total weight of 250 pounds to 300 pounds ( or more ) that is their own weight plus t the weight they are carrying, that means each of their steps is placing a total weight of 250 to 300 lbs on each stair riser, concentrated in just the area of their shoe sole..

Thirdly..you might want to talk to your insurers first, because if anything happens, they will not consider placing such a weight on the stairs or the floor as "normal", and thus may well refuse to pay out if there is an accident , involving damage or injury, during or after the heavyweight acrobatics.

My father had a removal business after he retired from the military, I was involved for a few years, in order to have such a business ( or certain kinds of transport businesses ) one has to have in the UK ( and most other EU countries ) what was known in the UK as a "certificate of professional competence"..( requires a quite stringent examination to be passed and to gain the certificate, we both obtained the qualification, and all the other licences, HGV artic' , forklift etc )..These were the kind of questions I would have asked anyone who approached us to move such a weight into an apartment via stairs..or even into a house at ground floor level..the floors in most domestic buildings are not designed ( nor are they capable of ) supporting this kind of weight when it is not spread out over a reasonable area.If someone could not prove to me that they were insured for such, and that they had had an architect "sign off" on the exercise..I would have politely declined the task, and left it under the tarp..on terra firma. :)

Edited November 19, 2017 by mikesc

[brmax]

You would save a lot of time and effort keeping it stored safely on a ground level, unless an industrial type building imo. Anyway this kind of large equipment could be moved by rolling on solid rod or pipes in stepped diameters carefully placed. I would look around your area for lift gate trucks with the capacity to lift this and haul it. They likely have hand operated fork lifts so to move around pallets say from truck to the other close area. Thats my .02 cents

 

Good day

Floyd

[CowboyBob]

Yes,it would be easier to take the head off,I can't tell you what to do,I have done them before but it's something you can look at & see what connects from the top to the bottom.one thing when you take it off is the tension mechanism will be hanging underneath by 3-4 in & you need to set it down & lay it on the backside so you don't damage it.There's 4 head bolts ,a screw through the foot lift arm to takeoff(or maybe a cable)

IDK if it's that heavy,I once delivered a Landis Model E myself,wheeled it out of my trailer on a ramp & into the shoe repair shop on the 2-wheel cart.

[480volt]

If you’re going to have to pay someone to move it, they might as well move it in one piece. It looks top-heavy, like a lathe. A good many lathes have been wrecked by  inexperienced people not understanding this fact and tipping them over. If it were me, I’d bolt it to a pallet and try and talk a friend into letting me store it in their garage. Maybe make ‘em some shoes. If it’s going to sit in an un-heated space for a long time unused, there is a product called Boeshield that was designed by Boeing to prevent rust on bare metal surfaces.

[Vinculus]

14 hours ago, mikesc said:

First of all, are you sure that your apartment floor can take the weight of the machine concentrated into the area of its "footprint" ?
( unless the floor is made of steel reinforced concrete, it may not be able to support the weight, and you could find it suddenly again at ground level )

Secondly, can your stairs take the weight ? even split some of the parts may weigh one or two hundred pounds, two hundred pounds carried by two strong guys means that each of them will probably have a total weight of 250 pounds to 300 pounds ( or more ) that is their own weight plus t the weight they are carrying, that means each of their steps is placing a total weight of 250 to 300 lbs on each stair riser, concentrated in just the area of their shoe sole..

Thirdly..you might want to talk to your insurers first, because if anything happens, they will not consider placing such a weight on the stairs or the floor as "normal", and thus may well refuse to pay out if there is an accident , involving damage or injury, during or after the heavyweight acrobatics.

My father had a removal business after he retired from the military, I was involved for a few years, in order to have such a business ( or certain kinds of transport businesses ) one has to have in the UK ( and most other EU countries ) what was known in the UK as a "certificate of professional competence"..( requires a quite stringent examination to be passed and to gain the certificate, we both obtained the qualification, and all the other licences, HGV artic' , forklift etc )..These were the kind of questions I would have asked anyone who approached us to move such a weight into an apartment via stairs..or even into a house at ground floor level..the floors in most domestic buildings are not designed ( nor are they capable of ) supporting this kind of weight when it is not spread out over a reasonable area.If someone could not prove to me that they were insured for such, and that they had had an architect "sign off" on the exercise..I would have politely declined the task, and left it under the tarp..on terra firma.

These are all great points. To address your first issue, the floor of our apartment is made out of a couple of feet of steel reinforced concrete. This is the student village, so the buildings are very bare-bones with the "innards" made to last and they just replace the floor coverings and such as needed. As for the stairs, they are similarly built. I think this will be the least of my issues. I already have an old Adler 68 on a huge cast iron table as well as a skiving machine in the opposite end of the room and combined they probably weigh around the same - although the footprint is definitely a larger surface area.

However, you have got me thinking. After some further investigation, we do have cheap storage units here in the student village on the ground floor of a heated building. After having a look at the machine later today, I might just book one of those store units and keep it there.

Thank you for your input, it was most valuable!

 

[Vinculus]

How this ended up going:

Gave up on the idea of getting it home. Rented a self storage space and arranged for having it transported there while I wait until we move to a bigger place. Gonna be a real nightmare to move it from Finland to Norway when the time comes to move though.

But it got it for €350, so I can't complain.

Thanks for the advice, everyone!

[thunter9]

yes

 

[Vinculus]

Since I already have the thread here, I guess I can ask a question regarding the motor.

Right now it's fitted with a 380V motor. I'd like to change this to a normal 230V motor, as that's just way more convenient. Can I just get a 1000W/1HP servo motor for regular industrial sewing machines, or does a curved needle sole stitcher require a particular type of motor?

[brmax]

Just to be curious, first.

What hp motor is on it now, and what dia. pulley is on the motor at present. 

Do you have a photo of the back gearing/pulley arrangement possibly. 

Good day

Floyd

[CowboyBob]

I have a customer that has bought at least 5 of our little 550 watt Family-Sew motors & mounted them on Landis#12,so a 1000w would surely work.

[Vinculus]

1 hour ago, brmax said:

Just to be curious, first.

What hp motor is on it now, and what dia. pulley is on the motor at present. 

Do you have a photo of the back gearing/pulley arrangement possibly. 

Good day

Floyd

I will have to get back to you on this. I haven't transported the machine to my storage unit yet.

 

1 hour ago, CowboyBob said:

I have a customer that has bought at least 5 of our little 550 watt Family-Sew motors & mounted them on Landis#12,so a 1000w would surely work.

Oh, cool. Maybe I'll just go for a 3/4hp servo then, like I have on my Adler 68 post bed. I'll have to do some more research. Pulleys and whatever are cheap, so as long as the motor works one would think getting the right size and width pulley shouldn't be hard.

[brmax]

Initial reasons I ask about the pulley arangement was to assess the use of plain ole 120v servo motor. Skip the 220 if possible. I was guessing that machine was geared already to use a small amount of power, and using machine parts as momentum. Im curious to hear any operational characteristics of these machines, mainly for any motor loads. 

Floyd

[Vinculus]

2 hours ago, brmax said:

Initial reasons I ask about the pulley arangement was to assess the use of plain ole 120v servo motor. Skip the 220 if possible. I was guessing that machine was geared already to use a small amount of power, and using machine parts as momentum. Im curious to hear any operational characteristics of these machines, mainly for any motor loads. 

Floyd

Well, I live in Europe and 220-230V is the domestic standard here. I will have to figure out everything once I’ve moved the machine and can tinker with it in my storage unit. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures, no question about that. Mostly because I have no idea what some parts do and require help from a fella abroad that restores these for a living. 

[Vinculus]

Finally got the machine out of the cold and into the heat. Here are a couple of pictures, apologies for the size:

The heating coils have been repaired and rewired to a new separate 220V circuit, so at least I can still hand crank it to test how it stitches without the motor.

[Wizcrafts]

What kinds of shoes do you make, @Vinculus?

[Ogoki]

Nice score!  I'm jealous.  That's the king of outsole stitchers, there.  I used one of those in a production facility, but now use a lowly Champion 55 in my home shop.

I don't really see the benefit of a servo motor in this case.  In my experience (heavy boots), you want flywheel momentum, so low speed stitching really isn't an option, unless you are making light footwear, I suppose...  Any old industrial motor would do.  The one on my Champion is a 1/3hp/1725rpm.  A 1/2hp wouldn't hurt, as the Rapid E flywheels are heavier...

Edited November 24, 2017 by Ogoki

[Vinculus]

12 hours ago, Wizcrafts said:

What kinds of shoes do you make, @Vinculus?

Stitchdown boots based on traditional Scandinavian military, work and ski boot patterns but on a more contemporary set of lasts.

You can see more examples on my instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ostmoboots/ 

I've been hand stitching the soles for two years now. Takes forever.

Edited November 24, 2017 by Vinculus

[Vinculus]

4 hours ago, Ogoki said:

Nice score!  I'm jealous.  That's the king of outsole stitchers, there.  I used one of those in a production facility, but now use a lowly Champion 55 in my home shop.

I don't really see the benefit of a servo motor in this case.  In my experience (heavy boots), you want flywheel momentum, so low speed stitching really isn't an option, unless you are making light footwear, I suppose...  Any old industrial motor would do.  The one on my Champion is a 1/3hp/1725rpm.  A 1/2hp wouldn't hurt, as the Rapid E flywheels are heavier...

I would be jealous for the price I got it for as well alone, haha. TBH I would've loved the Rapid II, which is a little smaller but still able to stitch cleanly through really thick materials. But alas, they are rarer than hen's teeth.

Note taken in regards to motors. Clutch motors are often quite big though, and the one that is mounted in the machine is small. Will have to find something small and suitable to make it easier to match up the pulley position and such.

[480volt]

You can also leave the original motor in place and get a phase converter to generate your three-phase. This option would probably cost more than just buying a replacement single-phase motor, but OEM three-phase motors are generally well designed and very long-lived (the motor on my milling  machine is 75 years old and still running fine). 

[Ogoki]

You don't need a clutch motor assembly, just a motor; and a 1/3hp~1/2hp motor should be small and inexpensive.  There is a clutch assembly under the tray on the left hand side.  One belt runs from the motor to the clutch, and the other from the clutch to the flywheel pulley.  It's different from a typical industrial sewing machine setup.

Edited November 24, 2017 by Ogoki

[GPaudler]

Beautiful boots!

I loved the idea of taking the machine upstairs into your apartment. 3 - 100kilo guys hugging would simulate that load and nobody would expect them to fail the floor.

A VFD (Variable Frequency Drive or inverter) is a good way to convert voltage and single to 3-phase electricity. They can be found on eBay and one advantage for a one-person shop is that one VFD can be used for multiple machines, saving you the need to replace lots of motors as you add equipment.

 

 

[480volt]

VFDs are great, they are the standard for motor speed control in industry. The only downside I know of, and I have never personally seen a case of this happening, is that old 3-phase motors or those not designed for multi-speed use, lack cooling capacity to run at slow speeds and can burn up. Motors that are designed for this say “Inverter Duty” on the rating plate. Personally, I wouldn’t hesitate to use a VFD on any three-phase motor I wanted to control, I would just limit speed reduction. I know of one case where a machinist added supplementary forced cooling air to a motor he was controlling with a VFD, but who can say if that was really necessary. I have a few machine tools that have motors with cases that are specific to the application, and cannot be replaced with off-the-shelf components. I opted to build one RPC to feed all these loads.

Just some musings from a commercial/industrial electrician.

[mikesc]

3 - 100kilo guys hugging would simulate that load and nobody would expect them to fail the floor.

They might well "fail the floor" or the stairs if they were all standing in the same 12" x 12" or 18" x18" spot ( that is what is meant by the "machine's footprint" ) Floors and stairs are rated at "max load per square foot"..I weigh well over 100 kgs and take a shoe size 13 ( or 14, depends on who is making the shoes ) UK, so a 300kgs machine with a small pedestal base ( like is like me standing in one spot with another "me" on my shoulders, "and another "me" on his shoulders"..3 - 100 kgs guys hugging each have their feet on the floor and so the load is spread over at least 3 times the surface area..

Things don't "float" upstairs when you carry them , the weight of what you are carrying is added to your own weight and is concentrated on each of your feet, and you go upstairs one foot at at time..so 300kgs plus the guys carrying it ( I can lift and carry my own weight, do it all the time when cutting logs and splitting them for winter, can't walk upstairs with a 100 kg piece of wood though ) ..300kgs between two 100 kg guys going up stairs..that's them carrying a 150kg each, upstairs..ain't gonna happen..so..needs 4 guys, each taking a quarter of the weight ( 75 kgs )..each guy weighs 100kgs minimum..so total weight 4 guys plus the machine..700 kgs ..on a stairwell..it had better be made out of reinforced concrete..your wooden house stairs would break, and you'd all wind up with a 300kg machine probably on top of you..enough to kill you..or cause some serious injuries..

The original poster didn't say what kind of floor or stairs were involved until after I had given my advice..and I gave him professional advice, based on experience running a transport and removals business ( that is "house moving", "industrial moving,lots of heavy machinery moving and transporting and we were also specialised in moving military families ( both dad ( now deceased ) and I were in the military at one time in the past ) from Europe into the UK and from one end of the UK to the other. We both had to be "certified" so as not to make the kind of dangerous screw ups that I have seen done by people who hire a truck get a few friends around to help, and then they put things that are far to heavy on upper floors or on balconies or porches , result, the floors fail, the balcony or porch starts to sag and fails..or the stairs give way while the "thing" is being carried up them and everyone finds themselves in an untidy injured heap of guys under a cast iron kitchen range and some sharp splintery wood where the stairs used to be.

I know one guy who was moving a kitchen range ( weight around 200 or 250 kgs , with 3 other guys up a stairway when it collapsed, he is now a paraplegic wheelchair user*, one of the others still walks with a heavy limp, all were hospitalised at the time )..we were working 3 houses down from them, I had already seen the cast iron kitchen range being unloaded, and had warned them that if the building was the same inside as the one we were doing the "house move" ( 1st floor kitchen ) that they would get hurt..They did, badly, I took no pleasure in being proved correct , nor in helping get the thing off them and the wreckage from around them and giving them emergency first aid until the ambulance guys arrived.

* the guy was a pilot, RAF jets, used to play rugby too , as did his mates, he is no longer a pilot, he doesn't play rugby anymore, his mates don't play either, but they were big guys like me, and they thought that it would be no problem to get the thing upstairs "if we can lift it, we can move it"..( they thought I was being to cautious ) there is much more to doing house moving, or industrial moving , safely, than being able to move heavy things.

We had another guy who had a big lathe ( well over 1000kg ) in his garage ( solid reinforced concrete floor ) , he thought we could load it "complete", onto a truck ( truck could take 32000 kgs , so "in theory" we could ) and put it into a ground level room "veranda" with concrete floor, at his new house..again in theory, we could, problem was to get to the veranda, ( at the back of the house ) we'd have to go through 3 rooms that had wooden plank floors on "joists"..even with two "pallet lifters" ( around 200 kgs each ) we would have gone through his wooden floors as soon as all the weight got past his front door and onto the floors..so he had to spilt it down into parts that weighed less.

What can go wrong, frequently will go wrong, pros try, by thinking things through, to avoid the consequences of that happening, and to, if necessary, not doing something which has a high possibility of being "an accident waiting to happen".

In case you think that means I'd never do anything that might be dangerous ;) In the "military" part of both my , and my dad's lives, we both did a great deal of jumping out of perfectly good aircraft when they were very high up ( and sometimes very low down ) and having only our pull on the D rings of our carefully packed chutes to prevent us from making a mess on the ground..sometimes we even jumped out of planes without being paid for it, and left pulling the D rings for as long as possible..no sensation matches free fall :)..except maybe a wingsuit. :))

long post..and not really "on topic", but, if it can prevent someone doing something potentially very dumb..and potentially dangerous.

remember, we are not just here talking amongst ourselves, many others are reading , maybe without ever posting, but it might make them think "safety first" before moving something really heavy.

Edited November 24, 2017 by mikesc

[480volt]

I didn’t get to see how they moved it, but I once hooked up a big autoclave at Lockheed that had been relocated from an adjacent building. The riggers claimed that the whole package weighed about a million pounds.