Author Topic: old elevator  (Read 1492 times)

Offline Michael S.

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old elevator
« on: July 06, 2022, 01:36:57 PM »
Hello,

Today my boss sent me to service the ventilation systems in our city museum. In the attic there is a room for the elevator machine. The museum was built in 1908 and the machine probably in the 1930's. In any case, still fully operational. Old electric motors with bronze bearings and oil chambers! From Otis. Must have been good quality.
In the exhibition there was a model of a steam engine and the first steamboat built in Magdeburg from 1839

Michael

Offline Admiral_dk

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Re: old elevator
« Reply #1 on: July 06, 2022, 08:49:40 PM »
Interesting Old stuff - thanks for showing  :ThumbsUp:

The Steamship is a little over a decade older than Hjelen in Silkeborg - but She is still sailing  :cheers:

Per

Offline MJM460

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Re: old elevator
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2022, 12:26:38 PM »
Hi Michael,

Great to see those original machines still working.  A tribute to good maintenance over the years.

And I love the ship!

MJM460
The more I learn, the more I find that I still have to learn!

Offline ZebraDriver

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Re: old elevator
« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2022, 08:26:10 PM »
A few years ago I was asked to look at an elevator for a customer (or a lift as they are called here in the UK). The control box was about 1' deep by 2' wide and 4' high. Inside it contained the equivalent of four modern contactors (that could be fitted in a box about 3" by 6" by 8"). But the best bit was the paperwork and drawings, one of the drawings gave instructions as to the exact shape the engineer had to file the carbon contacts into once they had worn (they were shallow domes about 2" in diameter). It turned out that all that was wrong was a copper braid that flexed when the contacts closed had finally had enough and had parted. Not bad for a set of electrics that were probably getting on for 80 years old at that time.

ZD

Offline rklopp

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Re: old elevator
« Reply #4 on: July 08, 2022, 05:52:15 AM »
I did a failure analysis of an idler shaft on elevators in the Russell Building in downtown San Francisco. Those were 1928-vintage DC gearless (direct drive). They were really neat, massive machines still going strong with modern controls.

Offline Bearcar1

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Re: old elevator
« Reply #5 on: July 14, 2022, 06:51:32 AM »
I worked for a contractor as a communications journeyman back in the day. I had done work in the Chicago Board of Trade which is located at the Southern end of LaSalle Street in the Loop in Chicago Illinois. I had spent time in that building when I had been an apprentice many years prior to that job. Anyway, the building managers and the head of communications liked my work so much that they hammered out a deal and "bought" my contract to be the buildings on-site tech, a job that lasted for some 14 years. I knew where ALL of the skeletons were buried and who was who. Anyway, that building was opened in 1929 and part of a major renovation project, all of the passenger elevator cars were replaced with modern units. I was assigned the task of bringing phone services into the controllers for those cars. (21 in all) The mechanical rooms, which most were split between two floors, contained all of the original electric motors, contactors and raceways that had been installed when the building first opened. It was a great deal of fun to be able to examine and get up and close to all of it and to see it in motion as they did not shut the cars down as I was doing my job. Those rooms were like time capsules to me and I can still recall the loud clacking of the contactors and the smell of machine oil..... ahhh, the good old days.
BC1
Jim

Offline Michael S.

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Re: old elevator
« Reply #6 on: July 14, 2022, 08:05:46 AM »
Jim, there was a smell of machine oil in that room too.
However, the control of the engines was carried out with modern components.

Michael

 

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