Thread: A3 Hammer Electric Lift

Hi Chris

I am interested in your ideas for an electric lift. I dont have a Hammer planer thicknesser but have something similar in an Ixes Plana 7 450mm machine. Winding the thicknesser table up and down soon gets tiresome. Depending on what you design I may be able to adapt to my machine.
Please keep me in the loop
Ron

Ron, the thing you would need is to somehow install a stepper motor to provide the rise and fall, the rest of the installation is the electronic control to drive the stepper motor.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

Are there any A3 Hammer owners out there who would be interested in an electric lift, it could be purely manual control or use a touch screen to set the table height and press go. I started on this project a long time ago, never finished it and I wonder if others might be interested in the same thing. No prices, this is just an idea at this stage and no connection to Auto Blast Gates.

Count me in, Chris.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks Chris
Thought you would be using a stepper. My problem is choosing the correct stepper and programing the drive/ controller. I assume you would use a belt drive to the manual rise and fall. Will pull the covers off my unit to see how easy it will be to install a stepper. I dont think there will be a problem other than fitting a drive pulley to the mechanical shaft. My rise and fall uses four vertical screw shafts driven by a chain. Might be possible to fit a toothed gear to the stepper to directly drive the chain. Will have a look see
Ron

Ron, the stepper choice is easy and we used a Gilmer belt to drive the original mechanism. The control electronics already exist and we had it all installed on mine but the smoke escaped during the wiring, that was at least two years ago and maybe more. Moving along to now we have almost finished the new router table using the same electronics and when that is done the A3 will get another go. I can't fully recall but the drive belt and and gear came from either RS components or Small Bearings and are readily available or were before the plague hit the world.

Count me in too please Chris. I have an 1999 Felder BF6 that likely has the same or similar mechanism.

Greg

I'm interested, Chris.

I’d be interested too Chris but I’d like to keep the standard Hammer dial readout on my rise wheel. I have a C3-31 but I think it’s similar.

Originally Posted by AndrewPatrol

I’d be interested too Chris but I’d like to keep the standard Hammer dial readout on my rise wheel. I have a C3-31 but I think it’s similar.

Keeping the dial is a good idea and one which has stopped me using an adaptor and a cordless drill which never struck me as a good idea anyway. It looks like this might have some legs but it is going to take a while to work out the nuts and bolts of it and come up with a final answer.

I saw a solution to keeping the dial years ago: A plexiglass disc was fixed to the handwheel over the dial. A nut was fixed to the centre of the clear cover, allowing a drill to drive it. It looked about as awful as it sounds, and you would have to be well clear of the handle on the handwheel to drive it with a drill.

I have some photos of a motor drive arrangement on an earlier Felder. Essentially the handwheel shaft was lengthened, an intermediate pulley with a drive motor was mounted to it and then the handwheel again fixed to the shaft.

How’s it going Chris, anydevlopments?