oh snap, sounds like a good story!?!? what happened??
@cyclopath i agree, friction probably caused a component to get to hot and it auto ignited the solution, scary, glad everyones ok!
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Yikes, I’m glad everyone is okay, but scary moment indeed.
Regular maintenance is vital to survival especially when spinning flammable solvent at a high rate of speed.
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yeah, but that was because the operator left the OEM spray head in there, sitting on the bag of biomass to submerge it during agitation; then set it to spin…and walked out of the room!
bent the drive shaft on that one.
edit: @RockSteady
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Some people just shouldn’t life 
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just up thread…
maybe this is why Delta stopped providing the spray bar?
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Why I don’t play loud music in my car… Why I made my girlfriend take her car in to the dealer, I heard something funny… Faulty motor mount… Under warranty…100 bucks… That problem was only going to get worse.
Love the diagnostic breakdown @cyclopath, what’s the typical operating RPM for that machine? How big is the drum, or rather what’s it’s mass?
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Rotor is about 750mm across and weighs in the vicinity of 400lb before biomass.
I haven’t pulled this style rotor yet, so I’m guessing on the weight based on similar rotors I’ve pulled and weighed. Last one was 375ish
It was probably being driven at 40Hz, but without knowing what “upgrades” were made to the drive ratio (it’s closer to 1:1 than OEM, but I haven’t measured the pulleys) I don’t actually know what that equates to in G or rpm.
Motors are rated 1400ish rpm at 50Hz, so we’re probably only in the 800G range
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When I was younger i would purposely listen to loud music to hide the noises! I knew the issues they just weren’t my priority.
But bumping gangster rap with a $3000 dollar sound system in my $300 92 Sentra was a major priority.
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I’m a big fan of the centrifuge configurations that have the motor up top, wish I could find another near Colorado for reasonable money. At least with those if a seal fails you just end up with grease on your extraction bags and basket, I think expecting a seal to deal with the combination of a harsh solvent, particulate matter and high speeds is asking for trouble sooner or later, and at least with the spindle up top if a seal fails the solvent doesn’t immediately wash out whats keeping the bearings lubricated
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Yikes, glad everyone is ok!
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Yikes, that’s a chunk of metal!! Geeze I’m glad it wasn’t a worse catastrophic failure. I’ve learned the hard way to check the rpms on machinery before energizing, or the settings in general. Used to run a 400 ton press break, over stomped some fine tooling this one time and broke the receiving tool. It shot a 3oz piece of razor sharp steel 40 feet across the shop space and it buried itself in a block wall. So lucky, so so lucky I didn’t hurt myself or anyone else… I bet that operator feels like a real dummy, I know I would.
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I can mimic the noise of your car by gently pounding on my work bench, lololol. That’s rattle though!!!
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damn dude, glad everyone is okay. Im sure this is not the first instance of this occurring in our industry. Im visualizing what this “woof” looked like, my toes are curled. Possible to share the vid of the “woof”? Might help others take preventative maintenance more seriously.
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Hopefully, but people who aren’t thoughtful rarely change their ways.
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I’ll post when the centrifuge at my shitty job goes. Just hope it doesn’t take me with it.
Those rubber dampeners aren’t supposed to be a consumable… right?
lol!
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No, they’re not. But if they’re done, replace them. Then try and figure out your balance issues
Expected dissection did not take place this weekend. But poking at the operators today, I learned of a “large, dark colored leak”, from “we’re not sure where” last week. Pretty sure that was a solvent washing all the lube out of the bearings…
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Well now that you mention it, the thing was screaming like a dying rabbit and convulsing like the subject of an exorcism, but I didn’t know that wasn’t normal
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When you work at a shitty company, lots of things become “normal”, like a 1st gen CUP30 sounding louder than a 120 decibel rocket take off.
6 months before they serviced that bitch.
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