Author Topic: 10 Footer Bearing failure (Read 6341 times)

halfcrazy · « **on:** January 14, 2010, 09:21:28 AM »

Well my 10 foot other power style turbine has been up for close to 2 years and has been running threw a Midnite Solar Classic charge controller for a year. There has been no maintenance done in this time other then oil the blades and tighten them once. A couple days ago it stopped turning the data logger showed it stopped 2 or 3 times and then stopped for good. We tilted it down today and brought it into the shop we found the bearings extremely loose and the rotors had rubbed the stator a very little bit. I think the saving grace is that i didn't get the hole perfect in the center of the stator so when the bearings loosened the hub rubbed on the hole in the stator binding it up.

We installed new bearings and races fresh grease and oiled the blades and sent her back up 80 ft in the air. All in all I am really impressed with how things look for a couple years in the weather.

we did have a few issues with the truck getting stuck in the ice pulling the tower up and had to strap a second truck to mine to get me onto the sand in the driveway which brings me to a question if you where going to buy a winch what does everyone recommend I would like to use it to tilt up a 17ft turbine on a 80ft tower as well so I am leaning towards something like a Warn 8000 pound receiver mounted winch.

DanB · « **Reply #1 on:** January 14, 2010, 09:43:02 AM »

Interesting...

I've not had any bearing failures that I know of yet save one, and I'm suspicious that the person who built it did not properly adjust the bearing.

Are you confident that you did not over tighten the bearing?

I've often wondered if we'd be wise to throw away the chinese bearings that come with those hubs and replace them with timkin bearings or something of higher quality - since it's not been an issue with me yet I've chosen not to go chasing problems that may not exist... but perhaps I should.

Alternatively - perhaps we should just be using a larger hub/spindle/bearing set on the 10' machines.

halfcrazy · « **Reply #2 on:** January 14, 2010, 09:49:07 AM »

well I did not over tighten it but maybe failure is not a good word as they where just real loose and a little dirty on the back bearing if one was in a pinch they could have just repacked and tightened I am sure but I had a good replacement set here so figured it was better to change them. The back race was a little marred up from the dirt I suspect.

SparWeb · « **Reply #3 on:** January 14, 2010, 12:13:51 PM »

As far as winches go, the 8000 pounds winch may be in the ball-park, but with an 80-ft tower I'm not sure if it will have enough guts to pull it all up. You're going to need a couple of horsepower at least, and 12v truck-mounts are a bit limited in that regard.

Another dangerous feature on truck winches is the free-spool lever. Do I need to explain what that does, or should I just shout "timber"?

Are you prepared to use an electric motor to drive the winch? If you only have hand-power, then look up a "grip-hoist" or a "Tirfor".

I'm happy with my worm-gear winch, but I'm down in the 2000 pounds range and my tower is much smaller. Don't know where you can get a worm-gear winch so much bigger. I like the worm gear because I can drive it with a power drill or hand crank if I must. When I let go of the crank, it does not move. You can't say that about a lot of other winches out there.

Jon Miller · « **Reply #4 on:** January 14, 2010, 01:02:17 PM »

Interesting,

I would think the increased rotational speeds the turbine is seeing being attached to the Midnight device might increase the ware and stress on the bearing.

Glad its been repaired.

Regards

Flux · « **Reply #5 on:** January 14, 2010, 02:02:03 PM »

Yes I think I would change any Chinese bearings if they are fitted with them.

My experience has been that every bearing failure I have ever had has been from water entry. I have had machines running for over 10 years with no bearing problems when water hasn't got in.

The increase in speed from using the midnight controller is nothing as far as bearings are concerned. My machines have all run faster than the stall regulated ones.

If your bearing has red gunge on the tracks and rollers it will have been damaged by rust. Extreme over tightening would result in the track surface breaking up but I doubt that start up would be satisfactory with such over tightening.

Flux

halfcrazy · « **Reply #6 on:** January 14, 2010, 02:29:44 PM »

I would hazard a guess it was water and dirt etc I did not use the seal per the otherpower plans maybe I should have tried it this time. I do not think the midnite controller added to this either probably the biggest factor was me not greasing at year one. as well as the fact that you can never really get the nut where you want it the cotter pin hole doesn't line up and I was always taught to go to the next looser spot it lines up a loose wheel bearing will outlast a tight wheel bearing?

jacobs · « **Reply #7 on:** January 14, 2010, 02:32:11 PM »

After 2 sets of rear axle bearing failures on my pickup in 3 years using Chinese bearings, I'll never use them in anything I care about again. Ask most any quality bearing supply house about Chinese bearings, you'll never use cheap bearings again. You get what you pay for.

wpowokal · « **Reply #8 on:** January 14, 2010, 04:26:31 PM »

I use a Tirfor it gives one very gentle control when raising and lowering, albeit a Chinese copy.

allan

97fishmt · « **Reply #9 on:** January 14, 2010, 07:30:32 PM »

After breaking an axle on my toyota pulling up my tower in the snow with chains on all 4's I knew I need to do something differently. I found the real thing the griphoist, awesome.

Electric may be nice but what if? Or? It works perfectly for up and down.

ruddycrazy · « **Reply #10 on:** January 15, 2010, 12:03:23 AM »

I work in the bearing industry I suppose as I repair industrial gearbox's for a crust. The cheap russian front or chinese bearings are best used as sinkers when you are fishing. Timken or SKF tapered roller bearings are considered the best and we do use Timken where possible. Heat I feel isn't really a problem in a dual axial flux so a zero end float would be the best scenario. The easiest way to determine a zero end float is with just a tad of oil NO GREASE put some string over the hub and tighten the hub turning the hub with the string until there some some resistance. Then line up the slot in the castellated nut on the loose side IF it is closer, if it is on the otherside a light pre-load won't hurt and is preferred. Then just mark the position remove and don't completely fill the void with grease about 65-70% is enough. Re-assemble and it should run for the life time of the generator.

Filling the hub with 100% grease could cause heating if the generator sustains high wind for days with the possibility of bearing shear. I could upload some pic's of bearings that gone way beyond failure for a laugh as I have shown some enginears them and they were speechless.

Also seals are designed to run with a fair bit of pressure as hot oil can disperse thru a loose fitting seal. In the dual axial flux a tight seal isn't required as all we want to do is keep the water and dirt out and not have drag due to the seal. If a guy has access to a lathe one can easy machine then polish the seal journal back to say a 0.003" 0.1mm crush. The resistance will be there but a lot lees and the long term wearing won't be also the water/dirt will stay out.

Cheers Bryan

Flux · « **Reply #11 on:** January 15, 2010, 12:21:12 AM »

I am 100% with Bryan on this, good advice all round.

I always fit seals and remove the "nip" to keep water out but not affect start up. Not sure what you do if you don't have a lathe but it would not be a lot to remove and a bit of vigorous work with a strip of emery cloth should make it free enough to get it started. I think the seals soon run in and get easier.

Flux

behoof · « **Reply #12 on:** January 15, 2010, 07:51:50 AM »

Halfcrazy,

Glad all worked out well for you.

My thoughts, for what they're worth, on Chinese "anything" is forget it.

I lost my entire windgen to a piece of Chinese chain that wasn't welded but had been galvanized.

When we inspected further after the failure we found most of the links were unwelded, just bent and touching each other.

Beware the Chinaman

behoof

birdhouse · « **Reply #13 on:** January 16, 2010, 01:01:40 PM »

hey-

just thought i'd add my two cents on truck winches. for starters- my winch has paid for it self many times over compared to getting a tow truck out in the middle of nowhere. i am not a "mudder" i merely try to get to my land a little to early in the spring. i have a 9500lb mile marker on the front of my dakota. i think the warns are better, but the mile marker has held its own many times. it has pulled my truck out when mud was past the center point of all four wheels. the largest problem with truck winches is the electricity needed. i think mine draws 200 amps @ 12 volt at max pulling power. i think my alternator puts out 70 amps or so. that leaves 130 amps for a battery to try and deal with. i even have a big boy yellow top optima battery and it has barely survived. i really would like to have my alternator re-wound, but have yet to do so. i ALWAYS rev the engine, turn off the headlights/radio/heat/any other electrical draw BEFORE i begin winching. this helps. i've always wondered if two sams club golf cart batteries would have enough cold cranking amps to start my truck?

as far as the winch letting loose... it will hold its full rated pulling power when sitting idle UNLESS you switch the free spool lever. it would be a pretty hard mistake to make as the lever is big and has a lot of friction to make it turn.

just dawned on me... if your running 12 volt, just hook your bank to the winch and raise your tower from there.

last thing- if you can get a new winch new WITH a synthetic line ijncluded, jump on it! there is a lot of worry/maintenance involved with keeping a steel cable taught on the drum to prevent pinching/binding. synthetic lines have eliminated this problem.

birdhouse

Lowhead · « **Reply #14 on:** January 18, 2010, 06:29:53 PM »

How did you get a Midnite Classic? I've been holding off buying an Outback FM60 for my hydro for nearly a year.

Andy

GeeWiz · « **Reply #15 on:** January 18, 2010, 11:03:01 PM »

Ya, I'm interested in the MidNite controller too.

What voltage are you wound for, and what voltage are your batteries ?

halfcrazy · « **Reply #16 on:** January 19, 2010, 05:33:06 PM »

I am Beta testing the Classic. They have 20 ish more unites heading out the door any day now then they will start to ramp up production. My turbine is wound for 48vdc and my battery is 48vdc but my testing has shown about 3 times the power out of these turbines with the classic.

cdog · « **Reply #17 on:** January 21, 2010, 12:18:01 AM »

Any idea of price on the classic?

My 10' has been up almost 2 years, bearings are toast too!

Will be another week before I have time to install a skf set to replace the chinese ones,

Cdog.

morglum · « **Reply #18 on:** January 22, 2010, 07:43:12 AM »

haha!

I always thought it was a Tire-Fort ( "pull hard" in french).

You learn something new every day I guess

cdog · « **Reply #19 on:** January 23, 2010, 06:51:02 PM »

I also had a few questions about 2 to 3 times the power from my mill as a result of the classic controller...

If the mill is allowed to run faster to produce higher volts will this affect furling?

Will this possibly get the tips going fast enough to erode them?

Should a higher voltage stator be used?

I have watched the video, and heard great things about the controller, I am curious about the lifespan of the mill if it is working twice as hard.

Perhaps I do not fully understand exactly how it works, any info would be great,

Cdog.

halfcrazy · « **Reply #20 on:** January 24, 2010, 08:59:45 AM »

The mill isn't working twice as hard. I will make an attempt at explaining the function here.

The wind turbine blades are designed for a certain TSR tip speed ratio then the stator is wound for a certain cut in voltage at start up rpm. now as the wind speed goes up the stator is still at battery voltage so it holds the blade speed down to cut in speed theoretically. Now any blade rpm above cut in is basically heat in the stator.

so with the classic what we are doing is as the wind speed increases we let blade rpm increase to keep the blades in there optimal TSR. when we do this the voltage increases with rpm so at the same amperage we where used to getting we would be getting more watts as the voltage is increased.

Furling in theory will still work and is based on total work performed by the turbine so it will still furl around the same amperage but the voltage will be higher.

An example here is say my turbine wound for 48vdc at 6mph cut in speed at say 25mph wind speed we would see maybe 15 amps so at 50 volts that gives us 750 watts now that same scenario but running threw the classic we would see 15 amps at say 125vdc now we get 1875 watts. these are fictional numbers but the real deal can be seen at

http://data.aprsworld.com/sites/midnite/maine/

this is live data from my turbine then under it you can click on daily data and see some graphs the voltage graph is messed up a little as the data logger only reads to 100vdc and I let the turbine run to 145-150vdc

now in a perfect world I would wind my stator for 60vdc cuttin as this would allow for the typical mppt offset voltage and also allow me to still go direct to battery with a resister in line. but we do have a classic capable of 250 volts safe operational input voltage so one could wind for say 80-95vdc and have smaller wire if they had a longer cable run.

cdog · « **Reply #21 on:** January 24, 2010, 06:51:10 PM »

So the mill will actually be turning faster then....

I understand the higher volts, same amps=less heat...

Availabilty and APPROXIMATE cost would be the next 2 questions, other than that im sold...

Would I use the same type of dump load only larger, it seems as the wiring would go to the classic then the bats, instead of strait to the bats and have my c-35 "watch" the voltage and act accordingly?

Thanks for your explanation,

Cdog.

cdog · « **Reply #22 on:** January 24, 2010, 06:53:01 PM »

One more thing, how many amps will it handle?

Cdog.

halfcrazy · « **Reply #23 on:** January 25, 2010, 02:29:47 PM »

You are correct the turbine will go threw the classic then to the batteries. the C series then monitors and dumps. Midnite will have a clipper as well there will be a couple different versions of the clipper but I don't have all the specs on those yet but they will replace the dump load system for you.

As for the Classic it is getting real close boB is working on some of the last software for it now. Then we will ship a small batch 20-30 for beta units then they should start shipping shortly there after. There will be 3 models there will be a 150 volt unit a 200 volt unit and a 250 volt unit. the amperage will be around 90 or more on the 150 then slightly less on the 200 and slightly less then that on the 250. I should know a lot more in the coming days as boB pulls it all together.

cdog · « **Reply #24 on:** January 25, 2010, 04:05:05 PM »

Thanks for all your help!

Please keep us updated, I'm sure the classic is what MANY of us are looking for,

Cdog.

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Author Topic: 10 Footer Bearing failure (Read 6341 times)

morglum