Workshop In An Alternate Homepower Environment

Given the current economic/social/political environment your concerns are well founded, however I think the primary or basic problem will not be limited or unavailable [electrical] power, but rather the more pervasive and dangerous problem of a lack of spare parts, raw materials and most critical HSS and carbide tools and blanks.

Whether by design or stupidity, the American manufacturing/industrial infrastructure is rapidly being destroyed, primarily by management "outsourcing" and plant transfer.

With the trade deficit [current account trade balance] approaching 2 billion dollars *PER DAY* it does not require a degree in rocket science or a tarot deck to see that the time is near when imports by the U.S. economy will be on a C.O.D. or even a "pre-pay" basis [in gold, not dollars].

Given the U.S. has a very limited (and rapidly diminishing) domestic production capacity for machine tools [lathes, mills, gear shapers, etc.], C.N.C. controllers, and perhaps most critical M2 HSS and carbide inserts, this means the entire house of cards will collapse as the existing machinery wears out, replacements are unobtainable, and repair cannot be attempted.

Re-industrialization will be very expensive, time consuming and dangerous, as even the most basic industries such as iron foundries will have to be reestablished. Indeed, a generation or more will be required, as the evolution, techniques and lessons of the period 1890-1930 will have to be retraced, with no assurance that the time required will be available before America must again meet a serious international challenge to its existence / hegemony.

Reply to
F. George McDuffee
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On 2005-06-14 too_many snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com said: >Newsgroups: alt.energy.homepower,rec.crafts.metalworking,rec. >woodworking >I am posting this subject in three different groups to hopefully >get a good cross section of ideas. I apologize ahead of time if >this offends anyone. >When one considers a workshop with metal and wood working >capabilities, what tradeoffs have you made to have a working shop >in an alternate homepower environment where every amp is precious? >Obviously hand nonpowered tools take on a special importance. >Cordless tools come to mind but which ones and what batteries? >When considerng stationary tools like drills, lathes, mills, saws, >grinders, etc., which ones fit best in an environment where one is >off grid? >Special operations like welding and using air compressors would >seem to need consideration because of their unique requirements. >I would be interested in hearing how others have approached this >situation and what implementations they have adopted. >Thanks for any suggestions or comments that you can offer. >TMT My shop contains a 1HP air compressor (real, 1970's DeVilbiss), Miller

135amp 120volt MIG welder, metal lathe, drill press, radial-arm saw, small table saw, assorted powered hand tools.

Because of all the motors, I chose a Trace sinewave inverter, 4KW to cover starting surges (SW4024). Battery is 550 amp-hour, 24 volt, T-105 golf cart, 3 parallel strings of 4 each. 1 KW of PV panels (16 Solarex 64 watt). System is in its 6th year of operation, supplying household and work needs.

I work alone, so machines are run singly. Duty cycle is low; so is energy consumption. I have yet to need to run a generator to cover my working load, though I do use it to maintain the battery in our rare cloudy weather, then avoiding power-intensive work.

When the shop was under construction, power initially was from the generator. Most of the time is just sat, thrashing at no load, being totally inefficient. Later construction was powered by the solar system, blessedly silently recharging itself in between power draws.

When I have production welding, sand blasting, or intensive use of an air-powered die grinder, I will probably have to use the generator, passing power through the inverter and maintaining the battery charge.

Tom Willmon near Mountainair, (mid) New Mexico, USA

Net-Tamer V 1.12.0 - Registered

Reply to
twillmon

Thanks for posting...actual daily experience carries alot of weight.

What is the largest motor that your equipment has?

Any of them three phase? I ask because many times industrial equipment has three phase motors.

Any desire for changing any of the motors to DC?

TMT

Reply to
Too_Many_Tools

Well, hell. Might as well just cash in your chips now. Take a quick vacation, and then head for your local crematorium.=20

Sheesh, George. You really need to get out more:-)

Matt

Reply to
Matt Stawicki

We have a few limitations - Hypertherm 600 suffers nuisance

I only use my compressor for about 15-30 minutes a day. Right now I'm using a gasoline generator to run it but I am considering the possibility of using a belt-driven generator and replacing the AC motor with a 12 VDC motor. For my purposes it won't matter much if it takes a little longer (lower gear ratio on the compressor) to fill the tank. I also always manage to find something to do while compressor is filling the tank anyway. The main problem I see with a 12 volt compressor is motor life and having to change the brushes etc.

I also use more human-powered tools than I would if I was connected to the grid. For example I make custom picture frames and I can either (in most cases) use a big noisy double-miter saw that uses a lot of power and throws sawdust all over the place or use a foot-powered chopper that makes hardly any noise and produces wood chips that I expect will be suitable fuel for the woodgas generator that I plan to build in the not-to-distant future.

A few people mentioned that cordless tools are ineffecient but hey, it sure is nice to be able to grab a cordless drill when you only need to drill a couple of small holes and not have to go start anything up or turn anything else on.

Reply to
Ulysses

You might try looking at what the Amish do to get around the problems. I remember reading somewhere about a group of Amish woodworkers who have converted their electric motors to hydraulics (of course you have to be able to get the hydraulic pressure) but they probably have a few good tricks.

Reply to
Ron

Thank you, Chicken Little.

Odd, that's not what my crystal ball tells me. ;-)

And that "trade deficit" is the stupidest boogeyman ever perpetrated - well, at least up in the top five stupid boogeymen - since the nervous nellies found out that it's a scary buzzword.

Do you even have any idea what a "trade deficit" _is_? It means we have two billion dollars more per day to spend on their crap than they have to spend on our crap. That means WE ARE TWO BILLION DOLLARS RICHER THAN THEY ARE!!!!! PER DAY!!!!!!!!!!

You have a significant "trade deficit" with the grocery store. How much do you spend there? Maybe $100.00/week? That's a ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS PER WEEK TRADE DEFICIT with the grocery store. They don't buy anything from you, do they?

And imagine your employer's trade deficit with _you_! He buys your labor for, what, $50K, $100K/year? How much stuff do you buy from him? Your EMPLOYER HAS A SERIOUS TRADE DEFICIT WITH YOU!!!!!

"Trade Deficit". Pfaugh!

Thanks! Rich

Reply to
Richard the Dreaded Libertaria

================== Please forward this wonderful news to the International Monetary Fund [IMF], the government of Argentina and the Argentinian bondholders. It will cheer them no end.

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

Greetings and Salutations....

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 17:29:43 GMT, Richard the Dreaded Libertarian wrote:

Hum...so you DON'T think it is a problem that America is losing the knowledge, skills and tools to manufacture even the basic tools we need to keep society going and the infrastructure kept up?

While your point may have some validity here, the major difference is that the money in your examples is circulating INSIDE the USA. The dollars spent in a foreign market are dollars that are taken out of the economy "forever". As an analogy, if dollars are the life-blood of the economy, foreign trade is like cutting an artery. Now...The fact of the matter is that SOME of those dollars DO come back in, but, since it is a DEFICIT, far more are going out than are coming in. Those dollars have to be replaced in the economy somehow. One "bad" way is to simply print more money. While this gets more bucks in circulation, it also cuts down on the value of each dollar. We have to remember that the world economy is more like a war than a cheerful family gathering. All the countries in the world are jockeying to gain advantage over the other countries, and, one way to do that is to drain the cash of one country. America, although economically large, is not infinite, and, if we believed we were, we would be fools. The fact that the dollar has dropped in relative value on the world market is proof that the deficits are having their desired effects. Also, remember that the growing European Union can (and perhaps already has) become a larger economic power than America. Finally, there is the basic problem that the world, in general, is not a friendly place. Countries that were our friends are now our enemies; countries that were our enemies are now our friends; The only lesson we can learn from this is that this is likely to happen again, so, to end up totally dependent on another country for our major manufacturing is a stupid thing to do.

Regards Dave Mundt

Reply to
Dave Mundt

Thanks for the reply.

I would agree that cordless tools have a spot in the AHP workshop since one can recharge them during off load hours.

Where would one find 12v motors in the suitable HP and speeds to retrofit something like a table saw?

In considering this subject, a lineshaft approach does come to mind but unfortunately you rarely see the needed equipment at HD or Lowes. I am not to crazy about chucking all the stationary power tools that have taken me decades to collect. Also, lineshafts take up room, linedriven tools are required to stay in one place and cannot be mounted on wheels to optimize shop space as needed. A workshop should be no larger than necessary for the heating/cooling aspect that also takes energy.

TMT

Reply to
Too_Many_Tools

There was a recent article in one of the wood working magazines about cordless tools on the higher end beginning to use lithium ion batteries instead of nicads. Apparently they can give one hell of a current draw and run at a slightly higher voltage (28V?). Anyway, along with the usual benefits for contractors on cordless drills and such there was great promise for cordless table saws and larger equipment due to the ability to run for extended periods at the higher current draw.

It doesn't help today but there is hope in the near future for the off-gridders and job site work.

Koz

Reply to
Koz

I really hesitate to jump in on this topic, but I advise you to make sure to do your research carefully before pursuing the replacement of AC motors with DC motors.

In the early days of homepower which was nearly universally 12V on the primary side, this was a pretty common practice, but in the overall picture of things today I'm not sure it's warranted in the general case.

At one time I was given to understand that DC motors are just innately more efficient than AC. It appears that this is not necessarily so, and has much to do with the crappy design and build quality of "shovelware" AC motors than any basic electromechanical principles. To know whether you would actually be further ahead after a DC conversion, you would have to consider each case individually. Ignoring power factor, a 12V load of power "x" draws 10 times the current that an 120VAC load will draw. Will the losses you avoid by bypassing the inverter get chewed up in the wire? How close to the battery room will the workshop be?

I started out at 12V primary by virtue of buying a house with an existing PV system. Like many frontier homebrew systems, it had started as a purely DC system to which an inverter was added later.

Having no plumbing in the house, I've acquired a number of small 12V pumps for various specific purposes, such as our bucket shower. Fortunately this hasn't represented a significant investment. With each system upgrade I left myself options for going to a higher primary voltage, and recently made the move to 24V when we replaced our chargerless mod square wave inverter with a sine wave inverter/charger. At some distant point in the future we might even make the jump to 48V, but for the moment, 24V was "just right."

The punchline is that our little pumps (and other 12V DC loads) are now running off a 24V/12V DC-DC converter. In the overall picture of things this crazy scenario actually still makes sense here, but again these are *small* loads.

The moral is that when you choose to run DC loads, you're creating specialized equipment and there are serious implications that might not be immediately obvious. If you stick with AC loads, your wire runs can be far longer for a given power throughput / wire guage, you can reconfigure the primary side of your system without affecting anything on the load side, use a common AC generator when it's more convenient or more sensible to do so, or take your gear with you and use it elsewhere.

Having "inherited" a mixed DC/AC system and lived with it, off-grid, for five years, there is no question in my mind that the new house we build here will be wired almost entirely for conventional AC and will likely have only some emergency lighting (power room!), and perhaps a few very special-purpose devices and outlets wired for DC.

YMMV.

-=s

Reply to
Scott Willing

Many of these are now self-service. You just put your money in the machine, and then lie down in your coffin. :-)

Mike Mandaville

Reply to
MikeMandaville

3 Phase motors really aren't a problem if you just use a FreqDrive that is 1 Phase input and 3 Phase output.

Me

Reply to
Me

Hi Matt, Where've you been? Crankin' out too many parts to get into any of the ongoing arguments?

Hey, remember that little 3-48 x .054" set screw? We finally got it running pretty good on the Tsugami. We're making it out of 416HT stainless and are using a Habegger adjustable thread rolling die. Almost full thread profile right to the ends. So far, so good. (crossed fingers).

I better get out of here before I get flamed for not being on-topic enough.

John

Reply to
John

Especially one with which we have such a long standing distrust. Pssst, by the way, everyone, they're still run by communists. Wasn't that the reason we fought a "war" against the Soviet Union as well as boycotting all trade with Cuba for half a century? Not to mention, OK I'll mention them anyway - Korea and Vietnam? To stop the scourge of Communism?

Reply to
Fly-by-Night CC

"Libertarian"?

LOL .....

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I doubt that this one can wear shoes ..... knots, you know ......

Reply to
Cliff

I absolutely agree with what you are saying. This is why the on-grid folks are using Tesla's design and not Edison's DC idea. For a house I also think it's probably not worth the trouble to run massive wires everywhere in order to use DC effeciently. Of course the higher the voltage the smaller the wire required, which brings you right back to 115VAC. Probably better to have a few extra batteries and a couple of extra solar panels (or whatever) to cover the loss of effeciency. When I first started reading about wind generators about 20 or so years ago they were talking about 120 volt generators charging batteries in series equaling 120 VDC. According to the author most appliances wouldn't care if it was AC or DC. This idea is definately simpler than having to buy and connect an expensive sine wave inverter but I suspect that today's electronics might be a bit more particular about their input current than a 20 year old dishwasher or vacuum cleaner. If someone wanted to try it I suppose the best thing to do would be to buy a new whatever and make sure you can return it. If it explodes you go get your money back. And of course there's always the problem of short circuits burning the house down.

However, for a stand-alone workshop that is to be powered seperately I would consider using DC as opposed to running a gasoline/diesel generator on one or two tools that I use regularly. For those that I only use occasionally for me it's no big deal to start up a little generator (most of my saws etc run fine from a Honda eu2000). As someone else pointed out running a compressor during peak sunlight or wind times (or when a generator happens to be running) and filling the tank can, at least in my case, supply enough air to do quite a bit of work later without having to use any additional power. Leaks, in this case, cannot be allowed to exist!

Lol. As long as you don't plug a battery charger into it to charge the batteries it's running off of ;-)

I keep toying with the idea (12 volt motors) but I still use a gasoline generator for the sizeable, short use loads. When it comes right down to it I'm probably only using about 2 to 3 gallons of gasoline per month to run my tools to produce around $15,000 worth of revenue. From a business standpoint this is an insignificant expenditure. I simply manage the use of my power tools and do work in batches. I don't work after the sun goes down (usually, unless it's a RUSH order).

Reply to
Ulysses

Well, hell. Might as well just cash in your chips now. Take a quick vacation, and then head for your local crematorium.

Sheesh, George. You really need to get out more:-)

Matt

Somehow methinks supply and demand will take care of itself.

Reply to
Ulysses

Our excuse for killing off manufacturing in the UK was Thatcher. What's America's excuse ?

Reply to
Andy Dingley

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