John, I built two systems that were essentially what you are describing. This for handling a long line of 55 gallon drums from spray booth 'til dry enough to handle. 30,000 drums in San Pedro, CA for the Navy and 45,000 at the Army fort in Charleston S.C. Frazee paint in San Diego formulated a special lacquer based OD color that met mil spec. That turned out to be a problem in Charleston, our lazy painter decided we wanted the booth filters changed too often, (daily) and on the third day, they burst into flames!

We found two of the heavy dry cleaners type of conveyors, that were being removed from the local county jail! The standards had 2" pipe verticals that we replaced with longer poles, to elevate the conveyor to about 11' high. This allowed the drums to roll out to an indoor, outdoor carpeted, 4' high loading dock for trucking.

The motor and gearbox were linked with pulley's and belts and a simple swap of pulley's brought it's already fairly slow speed, down into the range you are talking about. I didn't have to use a jack shaft but those are easy if it's still a little too fast.

If I recall correctly, (it was '74), at any time, there were about forty drums moving on the system.

The fun stuff were the pneumatic and other Rube Goldberg devices I built to clean inside and out, pressure test, automatically lift and hang on the line and dismount on the other end.

Bob

You should be able to find something stock from SEW Eurodrive that will fit your needs. We use the K series gearboxes on conveyors at work and have had very few problems with them.

http://seweurodrive.com/produkt/A13.htm

Consider hydralic motors. You have infinit control on speed. Kenny

I was thinking of a start stop situation also, ie instead of a continuous driver, index it at timed intravals, this would give slow thru-put but would also jiggel stuff around more. Thanks for all the suggestions, I will look at these more later.

Surplusjohn,
I know you said cheap but.......
W. W. Grainger has pages of "Gear Motors". Most HP ratings and most all speeds. 115 VAC and 240 VAC 3 phase....
You just might find what you are looking for.
Regards Walt..

What about this?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=200399798171

i have come acroos a rack rolled up into a large ring which gives a very significan reduction right there.

What about this one?
You might be the only one who wants it, can't get a project done cheaper than this.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Boston-Gear-Spee...item3ca72ae49d

The above comments on hp are completely wrong . Power in equals power out. The poster has a complete misunderstanding of the relationship of power and torque. While it is true that the torque is increased as the speed is reduced the power remains the same if we assume an ideal system with 100 percent efficiency. The relationship of Hp speed and torque ic that Hp is equal to the speed times the torque. Therefor when using a reducer the torque is incresed by the same ratio as the speed is decreased and not counting losses the power in is the same as the power out

I kept scrolling down waiting for someone to catch this...

HP = torque X RPM, so as RPM goes down and torque goes up, HP stays the same (minus losses, of course)

t

(Nicholas) Chironis.

Great books, the guy was like a walking worldwide web.

This is the answer - get a 56C-face 1/2HP motor and put a VFD on it and you are done . . .

I'd look at using a nutating gear box. Compact, high ratios, strong, very simple.