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Re: [TowerTalk] Motorized Winch for US Tower

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Motorized Winch for US Tower
From: K8RI <K8RI-on-TowerTalk@tm.net>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 00:40:31 -0500
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On 1/2/2013 10:50 PM, Richard (Rick) Karlquist wrote:


On 1/1/2013 7:19 PM, Eugene Jensen wrote:
I personal have no working knowledge of the W3000 worm gear but my only
concern is it design be driven by a drill motor. I use a Thern worm gear
4WM2 motor driven and it is designed for this kind of service. I many
years
ago on a small Hygain Tower blew the gears set driving it with a drill. I
was lucky that it happen at the start. I use mine on the tilt over on a
HDX555.  I have used a Hole Hog to drive it. It has two speeds and yes
you

Good point.  The W3000 gets hot if you crank it too fast.  The Hole Hawg
has a fixed 500 RPM speed.  The next model down right angle drill has
variable speed.  You need to take it easy with the drill.  Keep it
down to 100 or 200 RPM.  My W3000 has started to make squeeking noises.
  I have been looking for something with a higher rating but most other
winches are only 2000 lbs.  I might go with something like what is shown
here:

I think the point to remember is that drill motors are not designed for continuous duty, not even the heavy duty ones. I burned up a brand new, heavy duty Dewalt hammer drill, drilling 3/4" holes in a guy anchor brace in under 5 minutes.

If you look at the motor driven winches, they use a monstrous step down through spur gears which puts very little load on the motor just as in the ham series of rotators. The motor itself has so little torque you can stall it with the pressure from one finger. Drill motors OTOH provide considerable torque, but generally for a short period as the motor is small and is not very efficient at getting rid of heat. The larger rotators using a double worm gear have a motor capable of substantial torque although the double worm gear multiplies the torque substantially.

Variable speed Drill motors develop substantial heat when operated at low speeds/RPM under load. they can not get rid of the heat efficiently at low RPM and cooling is critical for these small motors. Two speed drills use gears and run the motor at full speed so they have better cooling.

This is often a problem with inexpensive winches when used to raise towers. If it takes 3 minutes to raise the tower make sure the motor and winch are rated for the load and run time.

A fellow ham who lives a little over a mile from me had one of these winches fail last fall, with the tower about 2/3rds of the way up or around 60 degrees. Got pretty busy there for a while.

A 1/4 to 1/3rd horse, 1700 rpm AC motor should likely be sufficient when geared down to tower raising speeds be it tilt up or extension speeds. I'd run the calcs before actually trying it though.

Small to medium size motors designed for continuous duty, or at least long run times when operated within their load limits stand up quite well.


BTW RPM should not have an "S" as in RPMS although it's often mistakenly written that way. RPM stands for revolutions per minute. Put an S on that and it doesn't make sense as it'd be revolutions per minutes which is acceleration.

73  Roger (K8RI)



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