Please behold the sheer magnitude of the mighty Typhoon!

[David Allen]

The pictures didn't show the scale of this thing!  It belongs to my friend Andrew B. I helped move it from a business to my shop so we can get it going and he can get it home.

The pictures show it being loaded with an overhead crane at an industrial site in northern Alabama. The man who runs the site bought a load of random materials and junk to use for industrial projects at his business. This fan was in the auction lot buy so he doesn't know the history on it, although he is very interested in the history of things like this. For that reason it was not recycled nor parted out.

This is a VERY early fan. It has an ornate cast iron ring-oiled General Electric motor and flat-belt pulley. Built with cast iron shroud ring, and lots of bracing and supports. Very intricately manufactured. 

The picture of the wheel shows just how heavy it is. The caster is literally crushed flat.

We're planning to work on it this weekend. Hopefully a run video will follow. 

 

[Andrew Block]

HEY DELETE THIS POST!!!! It might be evidence in a divorce trial!!!!!

🤪kidding. But yes, I make poor life choices sometimes.

But this seems like a fun project and David A was generous enough to waste his time meeting with the gentleman seller. I look forward to seeing it this weekend.

[George Durbin]

Putting this in the living room are we?

 

Geo...

[Steve Butler]

I say hook the fan to a generator and push the car!   You guys are NUTS, in a good way.   

[Mel Lagarde]

David 

 

This post and the resulting restoration will be awesome.   I can’t wait to see what you guys do with this monster!!!  

[Arjun Saini]

4 hours ago, David Allen said:

The pictures didn't show the scale of this thing!  It belongs to my friend Andrew B. I helped move it from a business to my shop so we can get it going and he can get it home.

The pictures show it being loaded with an overhead crane at an industrial site in northern Alabama. The man who runs the site bought a load of random materials and junk to use for industrial projects at his business. This fan was in the auction lot buy so he doesn't know the history on it, although he is very interested in the history of things like this. For that reason it was not recycled nor parted out.

This is a VERY early fan. It has an ornate cast iron ring-oiled General Electric motor and flat-belt pulley. Built with cast iron shroud ring, and lots of bracing and supports. Very intricately manufactured. 

The picture of the wheel shows just how heavy it is. The caster is literally crushed flat.

We're planning to work on it this weekend. Hopefully a run video will follow. 

 

That’s a ge repulsion motor?

[Stan Adams]

Its about time Andrew decided to go for it. I was afraid he was going to clown around & miss it. Should be great for the patio & around the same age as your house Andrew.

[Kevin Lee Clark]

Looks big enough and old enough to have come out of one of the Birmingham iron and steel companies.

[Russ Huber]

Incorporated in 1912 with 10K capital. 

Edited September 21, 2023 by Russ Huber

[David Allen]

Thanks to all who shared pictures of Typhoons installed. Lots of great old buildings!

Got a video of testing out Andrew's 'Phoon yesterday! Hope you find it interesting. 

 

[James Landry]

59 minutes ago, David Allen said:

Thanks to all who shared pictures of Typhoons installed. Lots of great old buildings!

Got a video of testing out Andrew's 'Phoon yesterday! Hope you find it interesting. 

 

AMAZING!!! God forbid one or more blades get bent and throws it out of balance!!!

[Trevor Andersen]

I could use that as a bathroom fan.

[Arjun Saini]

1 hour ago, Trevor Andersen said:

I could use that as a bathroom fan.

Taco Tuesday? 

[Marce Clark]

Thanks David for the video. it was informative and fun to watch.

[David Allen]

19 hours ago, Trevor Andersen said:

I could use that as a bathroom fan.

Or, alternatively; use the fan as a bathroom. There is plenty of room to mount a commode inside the box, next to the fan support, without any interfering with any mechanical parts.

[Stan Adams]

David this sure makes me wonder what was done to that motor over the years. It has obviously been rewound & would almost certainly have to have a consequential field to achieve that many poles, but the sounds & the way it runs better on lower voltage is perplexing. It definitely didn’t have a VFD to operate, & that noise on “correct” voltage should mean a short life. Very, very strange! Glad it’s you dealing with it & not me! 😀

[David Allen]

So, I replaced the original 5" motor pulley with a 9" pulley. It seems a lot happier!

 

[James Landry]

That sounds a bit better! :)

[Stan Adams]

It does seem to like that a lot better!!

[Malcolm MacGregor]

David, very fascinating story. Thank you for the good video!  Where are you going to put such a monster fan?

[Michael Rathberger]

I've been following this because it's interesting David. Is that in rated voltage or through the VFD? What led you to swapping the pulley?

[Trevor Andersen]

7 hours ago, David Allen said:

Or, alternatively; use the fan as a bathroom. There is plenty of room to mount a commode inside the box, next to the fan support, without any interfering with any mechanical parts.

Now you're thinkin. It could function as a septic/sewage chopper pump.

[David Allen]

16 hours ago, Trevor Andersen said:

Now you're thinkin. It could function as a septic/sewage chopper pump.

LOL I think it might end up more of a spreader or scatterer, if used that way... but there is still room to add another belt driven pump to the setup in there to keep that to a minimum! 

 

18 hours ago, Malcolm MacGregor said:

David, very fascinating story. Thank you for the good video!  Where are you going to put such a monster fan?

Thanks and glad you're finding it fascinating! As said; it belongs to Andrew B so he will have to answer that question.

 

17 hours ago, Michael Rathberger said:

I've been following this because it's interesting David. Is that in rated voltage or through the VFD? What led you to swapping the pulley?

Glad you're interested in it. It's a very neat fan for sure! As for the pulley, the VFD tells me the actual delivered kW going to the motor. It's a 2 HP motor so it should receive about 1.5 kW to 2 kW or so, counting for efficiency. With the small pulley it was barely 300W of load on the motor at 60 Hz.  Fan power curves are logarithmic versus shaft RPM and very hard to predict. I made a test by running the motor speed up until the fan started to draw more power and sounded "right" so to speak. It seemed that at around 115 to 120 Hz (with the original 5" pulley) it seemed happiest. I didn't want to run long like that because the motor its self isn't designed for that level of speed for many reasons, but it gave an idea of what the fan should sound like. That is running two times the speed it was originally. So, I looked around and found a 9" pulley which is not quite twice the diameter of the original. So the answer is it was an educated guess, based on making a few tests and then finding something I had here, already which was close to what I thought would be best. 

It's definitely in the logarithmic region of the power curve now. If I go from 60 Hz up to 65 Hz, it makes a marked increase in power demand (hundreds of watts), whereas with the small pulley it didn't make much of a difference until the speed was approaching 90 Hz or more.

With the new pulley, running on the VFD, it uses about 6 amps at 170V running smoothest. I ran it for an hour and the warmest part of the motor was the bearings with very little heat in the stator.