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

[Vinculus]

On 24.11.2017 at 8:55 PM, mikesc said:

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

These are great - and scary - points. I will take this into consideration when it's time to move the machine the next time around. Fortunately the whole thing is mounted to a pallet, so the footprint of the machine is spread over a slightly bigger surface area.

In other news, I have cleaned, oiled and threaded the machine, mounted a suicide knob on one of the flywheels and done some test stitches on the number of layers and rough material thickness of what I usually stitch: and it stitches like a champ! Stitches are a little short at the maximum length, but I think I can solve this by setting the bobbin thread tension to an absolute minimum and also lovering the top thread tension. It's the same on my Frobana: if I put too much tension on the threads the stitches will be shorter. I will also have to find a better looking thread. Ritza 25 1mm. thickness just doesn't cut it, I want a round twisted thread instead of a flat braided one - at least for the top thread.

 

[480volt]

You an expat American? Don’t know who else would use “suicide knob”.

[Ogoki]

CB554 bonded nylon thread is commonly used.  Not sure if that would look too modern for you. I do remember the maximum stitch length looking longer than that....  Water on the workpiece and a little bit of hand pressure can help it along, but I guess that's difficult if you're cranking it manually...

[GPaudler]

Beautiful stitching! Even without electricity, suicide knowing has got to be way faster than hand stitching!

 

[shoes]

On 11/20/2017 at 11:10 AM, Vinculus said:

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!

Vinculus, how much is that in USD ? Here in the states, that is a $4,000-6,000 machine in good running shape. I'm thinking you "stole" it!!! Good score.

[Vinculus]

15 hours ago, 480volt said:

You an expat American? Don’t know who else would use “suicide knob”.

Haha, nah. I just love using idioms and local terms. I have a lot of American internet acquaintances and also study folklore (vocational group culture), so I suck it up like a sponge and use it in my everyday conversations.

 

15 hours ago, Ogoki said:

CB554 bonded nylon thread is commonly used.  Not sure if that would look too modern for you. I do remember the maximum stitch length looking longer than that....  Water on the workpiece and a little bit of hand pressure can help it along, but I guess that's difficult if you're cranking it manually...

I'll look into that. One of the guys at the Viberg boot factory is also going to let me know what they use. It looks like a semi-beefy twisted thread of some kind with a matte finish, so it can't be nylon, I think. As far as the stitch length goes, I'm not too upset. In general I prefer slightly higher SPI for a clean and nice sole stitch. The length is similar to what you'd find on a pair of Tricker's or other English makers' sole stitching.

10 hours ago, shoes said:

Vinculus, how much is that in USD ? Here in the states, that is a $4,000-6,000 machine in good running shape. I'm thinking you "stole" it!!! Good score.

It's about $380. Fully aware that it's a complete steal and thrilled knowing that fact, haha. You couldn't give one of these away for free just a few years back here in Finland because no one made or bought stitched construction footwear for a loooong time, but now it's getting popular again. Normally you can find them for $2200 and up here now, so the deal I got is still amazing even on the basis of a national pricing trend. I've looked at the Rapid A (gray paint) and C (green paint) and Model 309 (red paint), but settled on the Rapid E. The A and C are way too big and crude, the 309 too small. As mentioned earlier, there is a rare Pedersen Rapid II (grayish blue paint) that is right in the middle between Model 309 and Rapid E. Would've loved to get my hands on that one, but there's just one cobbler in the whole country who owns one. And I think he's taking it with him to the grave, haha.

[480volt]

5 hours ago, Vinculus said:

Haha, nah. I just love using idioms and local terms. I have a lot of American internet acquaintances and also study folklore (vocational group culture), so I suck it up like a sponge and use it in my everyday conversations.

10-4

[Ogoki]

7 hours ago, Vinculus said:

I'll look into that. One of the guys at the Viberg boot factory is also going to let me know what they use. It looks like a semi-beefy twisted thread of some kind with a matte finish, so it can't be nylon, I think.

Actually, it doesn't look shiny once stitched.  I would be surprised if Viberg used anything else, but let us know.

I can't imagine paying $4000-6000 for an outsole stitcher.  Working Landis stitchers typically go for 600-700 dollars around here.  One sold for 300 recently.  Rapid Es aren't as common, so maybe a little more...

[Vinculus]

36 minutes ago, Ogoki said:

Actually, it doesn't look shiny once stitched.  I would be surprised if Viberg used anything else, but let us know.

I can't imagine paying $4000-6000 for an outsole stitcher.  Working Landis stitchers typically go for 600-700 dollars around here.  One sold for 300 recently.  Rapid Es aren't as common, so maybe a little more...

Ah, good to know. Will definitely see if I can't get hold of some of that then.

Yeah me neither. Maybe Canadians and Northern Europeans are spoiled with outsole stitchers

[Vinculus]

I tried test stitching the inner stitchdown row on a trial shoe yesterday. It went to hell  Thread just kept breaking on me, which hasn't happened on any of the dry runs on my sample piece. Back to the drawing board, a.k.a waiting for the new thread to arrive. The Ritza 25 just seems too heavily waxed and the machine doesn't want to pull it through smoothly, so it just breaks instead.

[Ogoki]

Darn!  Yeah, that's one thing I learned:  You can do all the trial runs you want with sample pieces, but it's a whole different ballgame when you stitch a boot!

Edited November 29, 2017 by Ogoki

[Vinculus]

Yup! I actually went back and rethreaded the stitcher differently; not going through the "tube" with the clamp all the way at the back of the machine stand that holds the thread back before going into the tension wheel. That seems to have solved the thread breakage issue. It says you're supposed to go through the wax pot if you're using waxed top thread, but since my wax pot is clogged and there is a rotten thread in there, I just skipped it and went straight up from the thread spool through two guide holes and into the tension wheel. Seems to be working much better with this specific thread. Also set the bobbin thread tension to an absolute minimum, and now the stitches are both longer and nicer looking.

[GPaudler]

Thanks Vinculus. I'm not likely to ever make a shoe, but I find this fascinating and look forward to more photos and descriptions of the process!

Gary

 

[Vinculus]

Hi guys. I took a second look at the plaque on the motor of the stitcher today. Notice how it says 220/380V on the label below the HP:

This leads me to believe the motor can be run at 220V as well, the standard domestic voltage in my country. But the power plug is three-phase, the black one is for the bobbin/wax heater and the red three-phase is for the motor: 

Notice also how the on/off switch has been replaced. The ugly gray brick is the new switch. Any ideas how I can get this up and running on 220V? It seems a bit counterintuitive that the motor itself is three-phased but is marked to still be able to run on regular single phase 220V current? I really have no idea about all of this, which is why I need your help.

Oh, and I stitched some soles by handcranking it. Some tension issues still to figure out, but I'm getting there!

[Constabulary]

2 hours ago, Vinculus said:

Notice also how the on/off switch has been replaced. The ugly gray brick is the new switch. Any ideas how I can get this up and running on 220V? It seems a bit counterintuitive that the motor itself is three-phased but is marked to still be able to run on regular single phase 220V current? I really have no idea about all of this, which is why I need your help.

Hope this helps:

 

[Vinculus]

34 minutes ago, Constabulary said:

Hope this helps:

 

Thanks a million! I don’t know if I dare to do this myself but at least now I can show this to someone competent who can rewire it for me. 

You put a normal 1-phase plug on this at the end right? Like the black plug in my picture up here. 

[Constabulary]

12 minutes ago, Vinculus said:

You put a normal 1-phase plug on this at the end right? Like the black plug in my picture up here. 

YES!    We have the same plugs in Germany.

Edited January 18, 2018 by Constabulary

[patineto]

What about taking out a window and use a fork lift to lift it up..

This is pretty much the method to bring big items into your tiny apartments all over the Nederlands, Belgium, etc

 

[mikesc]

What about taking out a window and use a fork lift to lift it up..

I'd imagine the cost of hire of one of those would hurt ( IME they do run expensive, even at half a day hire rates ), and you have to be insured to use one if the base or the elevator part is anywhere public..

re the 220 or 380 3 phase..you can "trick" 220 mono into running as 3 phase with a capacitor ( to "rotate" a phase by 90 degrees ) ..and by wiring as "star" ..normal 380 3 phase would be wired as "triangle"..any pro electrician should be able to re-rig your machine to do it, the part which is already set to be 220 mono can be left as is ( but run off a 220 mono "spur" before the "star", or via separate 220 mono feed.

Sure it has been discussed here before how to do this 380 to 3 phase to 220 fake 3 phase..think that I was involved in one such discussion with also Northmount ( Tom ) and some others a few years back.

I've rigged a lot of my 380 3 phase stuff ( compressors, sewing machines etc ) to run on 220 mono this way ..

or..you could use a frequency variator..or variable frequency drive ( VFD )

search for
3 phase to mono frequency variator
strictly speaking it ought to be a
220 mono phase to 380 3 phase converter
but you'll get relevant results with either search string.

Edited January 19, 2018 by mikesc

[patineto]

12 minutes ago, mikesc said:

 

I'd imagine the cost of hire of one of those would hurt ( IME they do run expensive, even at half a day hire rates ), and you have to be insured to use one if the base or the elevator part is anywhere public..

 

 

sure it will need to be kind of a "Bro-Deal",  i was trying to give a real alternative for dealing with the inside of the building constrains..

I will also suggest to make a "Big foot print" platform using 2x6 so is very rigid and can spread the load of the machine (Awesome monster and work too by the way) so the load and vibration can be spread more evenly..

[Vinculus]

6 hours ago, patineto said:

What about taking out a window and use a fork lift to lift it up..

This is pretty much the method to bring big items into your tiny apartments all over the Nederlands, Belgium, etc

 

I’ve pretty much decided to just keep the machine in a storage unit until we move to a bigger place on the first floor. It’s mounted to a so-called Euro pallet (120x80cm) already which gives it a bigger footprint. 

There also seems to just be two huge bolts attaching the machine head to the stand, so it shouldn’t be too hard to split it into two parts for easier transportation. 

[Vinculus]

Alright, so I bought a 25 uf capacitor and a new single phase power cord. Here are some pictures:

That's the internals of the motor. The two loose wires come from the capacitor. Which wires should be moved and attached where? This seems simple enough.

This is the rotation direction I need.

The motor wires lead to this. The cable on the right comes from the motor. It then goes into the power switch:

The cable on the right is for the motor. This is where I get confused and am not sure where to connect the new single phase power cable, since there's this second cable there and it seems like they share several prongs.

I assume I must adjust this to about 1.7A?

Thanks!

[Vinculus]

Disregard the above. I had an electrician rewire it to 220V and the motor ended up not having enough power to even drive the stitcher with no material to stitch. That was $100 wasted. Guess I’ll just have to get a new 220V motor. 

[Constabulary]

$100 just for the wiring? WOW

Can you post a picture of the wiring he did in the motor junction box? Hope he did not forget to install the capacitor.

Edited January 20, 2018 by Constabulary

[Vinculus]

54 minutes ago, Constabulary said:

$100 just for the wiring? WOW

Can you post a picture of the wiring he did in the motor junction box? Hope he did not forget to install the capacitor.

Yeah he was asking 150 initially. 

I didn’t take a picture of the new wiring. He changed it from star to delta if I remember correctly. We did a test where he just wired the new mains with a single phase plug right to the motor to see how it ran, plus the capacitor. It ran continually like it’s supposed to do, but got hardly any more torque or speed when stepping on the “gas”. 

Edit: he wired it back to original and I tested it with the 380V connection. Ran like a dream with tons of power. Seems like this motor just wasn’t a good candidate for rewiring. 

Edited January 20, 2018 by Vinculus