Thought of thermite when I saw this. New gear to power his shop....
Antique Radio Forums • View topic - 1929 elevator motors
Thanks for that, but I have four of the newer and better motors to power just two 10EE. Only one still has an MG, and that only because I have some comparison testing to do "for record" before converting to a solid-state drive.
It would be a good fit in the Monarch forum, actually.
From the 1890's, what was to become known as a "Ward-Leonard" motor-generator drive had always been implemented as this one is. By coupling
separate AC drive motor to DC Generator on a separate frame - as clearly shows.
Somewhere around 1932 to 1934, Reliance Electric & Engineering simplified the alignment, installation, and maintenance of an "MG" by winding the drive motor, armature DC generator, and Field DC generator AKA "exciter" all onto the same shaft and within the same housing and mountup.
That eliminated couplings and simplified alignment, as well as cost of frame and mounting.
Some were made to stand vertically - were nick-named the "fireplug" MG.
10EE have been shipped that utilized those, external to the lathe, as OEM.
The first-generation volume-production MG-drive "inline exciter" 10EE were the same basic rig as the Reliance "fireplug", but laid horizontally so they COULD be stuffed into the belly of the lathe's base-casting.
The tiny field generator on those was prone to overheat and fail in Machine Tool use. A much larger field generator / exciter that cooled itself much better and had room for extra windings for better load regulation replaced that. Those came to be known as the "piggyback exciter" mount for most of the 10EE production we still see.
Ward-Leonard - the "pioneer" or the MG variable drive - does not appear to still make such drives. Last couple of times I looked, they were doing very expensive specialized motors for offhshore oil rigs.
And electric motors for modern submarines. About which they understandably just don't say much!
