Fredrick Paget on mon 19 jun 06
>Squeaky Brent wheel gets the . . .
>Now I am really curious about the Brent black box wheel silencers and I
>am wondering if anyone else has ever heard about these devices.
>Martie Geiger-Ho (aka the Kiln Priestess)
Martie,
I am pretty sure that it is an electrical filter circuit that smooths
out the chopped electrical wave form that the Brent controller puts
out. In its simplest form it is called an LC filter and consists of
an iron cored choke coil with air gap and the biggest MFD high
voltage electrolytic capacitor space and the budget will allow. the
choke (also called an inductor) needs to have a wire size big enough
to carry the line current to the motor and the capacitor voltage
rating needs to be about 200 volts DC. You can surely find a source
for these in Hong Kong and make your own, Look up LC filter to see
how they are wired.
[http://www.tpub.com/content/neets/14179/css/14179_204.htm]
You can leave out C1 and L1 can be an automobile radio choke . C2 is
described above. RL is your motor. That sort of 3 line arrow symbol
is the ground symbol and in this case they would be hooked together
and to one of the motor wires which has the negative polarity.
This circuit has to be put in the motor circuit ahead of any
reversing switch you might have because the capacitor can only work
if it has the correct polarity . It can not take reverse polarity
which is what a reversing switch does for the motor. Ahead or the
switch is ok.
I
--
From Fred Paget,
Marin County, CA, USA
fredrick@well.com
Charter Member Potters Council
Martie (AKA the Kiln Priestess) on mon 19 jun 06
Squeaky Brent wheel gets the . . .
Hello to everyone:
Last week I visited the studio of Mr. Lueng, who has been supplying clay
and equipment to the ceramic community in Hong Kong for a very long time.
I took the new subway line to his studio in Tun Mun in the New Territory
region (rather far from the center of HK) so that I could peruse his stock
of clay and glaze materials. Anyway, while I was there he proudly showed
me his =93silent=94 Brent wheels, which he said had been made that way by th=
e
addition of a device called a =93silencer.=94 Noting the skeptical look on m=
y
face, Mr. Lueng flipped the wheel over and sure enough, underneath was a
black box with an electrical cord on it that was plugged into the wheel's
motor. Mr. Lueng told me that before he would purchase any of the wheels
(he had the models CXC and the model B in his studio, both with a silencer
box on them) that he told the Brent dealer that they had to ensure him
that the wheels would run silently. In response to his request he said
that Brent put a silencer on the wheels for a charge of $50.00 U.S.
dollars.
The wheels were indeed silent, but I think that I did detect a little hum
from the model =93B=94 wheel, which I did not say anything about.
I wonder if the CXC wheel would have been so quiet without the silencing
device and I wonder what this device actually does. Also, the wheels were
fairly new, so I imagine that they would be pretty quiet anyway, (well the
CXC should be, however, I know that the B models are noisy because I just
purchased 16 of them for use at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford
where I teach and they rattle and squeak a lot.)
Mr. Lueng believes so strongly in the silencers that when he received the
request from the Academy of Visual Arts at the HKBU where I am working
this summer, for a bid on 21 Brent wheels, he added the fifty dollars for
the silencers onto the bidding price. Unfortunately this made the cost of
the wheels much higher than the bidding price of another supplier in Hong
Kong and Mr. Lueng did not get the contract.
Now I am really curious about the Brent black box wheel silencers and I
am wondering if anyone else has ever heard about these devices. I am
almost starting to wish that I had known about them before and that I
would have structured the Brent wheel purchase to include them (although
the truth is, I need to keep equipment costs down, so even if I had known
about the silencers a few months ago, I doubt that I would have been able
to squeeze them into the budget).
Does anyone know more about the Brent wheel silencers?
Anyway, I guess that sometimes squeaky wheels don=92t get the grease =96
instead they just get the =93silent=94 treatment.
Martie Geiger-Ho (aka the Kiln Priestess)
University Fellow
HKBU Academy of Visual Arts
Hong Kong, China
kilnlore@aol.com
www.kilnlore.com
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