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

[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.

[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.