Thread Number: 53744
Article from Pop Mechanics on fluid drive |
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Post# 760636   5/31/2014 at 15:47 (3,617 days old) by washman (o)   |   | |
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books.google.com/booksQUESTIONMAR... |
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Post# 760695 , Reply# 1   6/1/2014 at 04:57 (3,616 days old) by arbilab (Ft Worth TX (Ridglea))   |   | |
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Fluid coupling is groovy. Lets the startup slippage take place in oil which responds by warming somewhat, non-destructively. Like your automatic car sits idling at a light while still 'in gear'. The directional/sprag/roller clutch really doesn't wear much, as it locks the instant the motor reverses for spin and undergoes no friction to speak of. Your automatic car is FULL of sprag clutches, seldom a cause of malfunction. Every reversing-motor washer has one, and even non-reversing like Westinghouse 3-belts do.
So the article doesn't really answer the question, why that customer's SQ kept destroying fluid couplings. I mean, if ANYbody chronically abuses washers it's coinop customers, and SQ washers don't chronically fail in those applications. The whole idea of fluid coupling is that it's immune to abuse. But SOMEthing was happening at that household. I'm partial to legacy Maytag's spin clutch. In spin with a static basket, the belt slacks and tightens as the basket reaches operating speed. There IS a wear element, but it's external, inexpensive, and readily replaced: the belt. There's STILL a sprag clutch for spin but Maytag experts, how often does it cause a problem? A potential troublemaker is the legacy Whirlpool spin clutch. Much like a manual car's, it actually DOES slip friction elements. But again, Whirlpool experts, how often does THAT cause a problem, compared to others within that design? Nowadays with all the FLs and even some TLs, spin start is done electronically. Which has the potential of being trouble free. But in practice, is it? And the answer to almost everything is 'replace the module' for over $100. |
Post# 760733 , Reply# 2   6/1/2014 at 11:09 (3,616 days old) by combo52 (50 Year Repair Tech Beltsville,Md)   |   | |
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The problem with SQs FD was it always slips a little and it wastes power, while not a big deal on a washing machine overall it is still not an ideal system [ notice that no washer manufacturer uses it today ]
All reversing motor washers DO NOT have springs in their drive system, example, Maytag's great helical drive washers [ 1956-2006 ] and no springs were ever used in WPs Direct Drive washers drive system. The problem with Maytag's simple using the belt as a clutch system is that it too always slips a little under full speed spin with a heavy or slightly unbalanced load. You can demonstrate this by using a tack on the spinning wash basket and taking your food and applying force against the motor to tighten the drive belt and you will see a pickup in speed. On a WP BD or DD or even a GE FF washer there is no measurable clutch slippage once the basket is spinning for a minute or more. |
Post# 760767 , Reply# 4   6/1/2014 at 13:54 (3,616 days old) by Yogitunes (New Jersey)   |   | |
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makes you wonder, they went from heavy sturdy metal constuction to cheaper metals and plastics......but the cost savings was not seen by the consumer....
even machines like the Cabrio, LG, and Samsung......there is so much plastic, and yet the prices are way upto 1000.00 or more for one machine.....which doesn't stand a chance of lasting 30 years... people today still buy Maytag under the assumption of a dependable unit built to last..... and most boast about the length of warranties on the tub or motor......but what really fails, and is only covered for the most part of 1 year....bearings, seals, and control boards... |
Post# 760847 , Reply# 5   6/2/2014 at 03:31 (3,615 days old) by arbilab (Ft Worth TX (Ridglea))   |   | |
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Are we confusing/interchanging 'sprags' and 'springs'? 'Sprag' is rather a generic term for one-way clutch which grabs in one direction but not in the other. One type of sprag (Westinghouse) uses a spring (coil actually, the axial 'springiness' of the coil is not used), the ones in cars (to which the name properly applies) do not. Not that it matters much. VERY few customers know or care what they have and neither is particularly prone to failure.
Fluid couplings take a lot of machine work to manufacture. = time + tooling = money, thus discontinued. As far as extraction efficacy, the 'slippage' of either fluid or slack-belt is negligee (sic) when your target speed is only 600RPM. |
Post# 760939 , Reply# 8   6/2/2014 at 16:06 (3,615 days old) by Yogitunes (New Jersey)   |   | |
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of course not...because a big deal of old school machines, especially the introduction of Automatics, is it cleans itself!.....
what next....'clean' the dishwasher before you load dirty dishes! sweep the carpet before you vacuum! wash your hands before using the restroom!....... just wait.....its coming! |
Post# 760940 , Reply# 9   6/2/2014 at 16:11 (3,615 days old) by washman (o)   |   | |
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somewhere, somehow, I think you are right on this one! And a sad day it will be too! |
Post# 760988 , Reply# 11   6/2/2014 at 18:39 (3,614 days old) by combo52 (50 Year Repair Tech Beltsville,Md)   |   | |
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Edward, good point about the frictional loss of having the gear train running on WPs DD washers when the machine is just draining or spinning, this type of engineering does waste power. WPs new BD TL washers do not run the transmission gears when draining or spinning, and the new BD washers use just 1/3 of the electricity compared to the old DD washers. [ or any other older style washer that uses a split-phase motor for that matter ]
SQs TL washers with a slipping belt will be very soon redesigned to reduce power consumption. Also I am not confusing springs and one way clutches, WP BD, DD, NEW BD and MT helical drive washers do not use either in their drive system to change from wash to spin when the motor reverses. But we must all look at the bigger picture, a new WP BD washer takes well less than 1/4 the energy to produce and transport to your home compared to an older 70s style washer, so even if it only lasted 5 years this country is way ahead in saving energy and when you factor in the savings in water consumption, hot water use, electrical consumption and the energy saved by the superior water extraction when the clothing goes in the dryer you are not even close to the amount of coal, gas and oil that were consumed with the old way of doing things. It is also a MIRTH that 1970s SQ washers very often lasted even 10 years let alone 15 or 20. SQ TL washers in the 70s were about the LEAST reliable washer brand, even Norge and Westinghouse washers would often outlast them. I don't recall ever seeing a reversing SQ last much more than 10 years and we threw plenty away when they were just over 5 years of age. And yes I have seen a few of WPs new BD TL washers already replaced already, but when you consider that our company has done only about 15 service calls on these new machines out of more than 7000 [ 1750 on automatic washers ] in home service calls we run a year the record on this new washer might just be better than any other washer in history. So unless one of you have a crystal ball and can tell me just how long these new machines are going to last on average, I am going to say, from my professional experience that I think they will average between 10 and 30 years before most get replaced. |
Post# 761064 , Reply# 12   6/3/2014 at 00:26 (3,614 days old) by murando531 (Augusta, Georgia - US)   |   | |
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I've had the new belt-drive Whirlpool for about 4 years now, and I have to say that it's the only machine I'm impressed by amongst everything that has been produced the past 10 years. It follows the exact theory I have on how new washers should work: it uses much less energy though it has plenty of power, but also uses enough water to get the job done properly.
The design seems simple enough, an inverter motor driving a belt to a drive rotor, where a shifter is either in agitate position, which frees the agitator and basket from each other, at which point the motor itself oscillates directly, and the satellite gears in the gearbox (it's not really a transmission in the sense of past washers) convert the torque into a powerful ~180-210 degree agitation arc, or the shifter is locked into spin mode, connecting the agitator shaft and "splutch", as they call it, together. There's no slippage in the belt as you can hear the motor gradually ramping up with the speed of the basket. Even with heavy loads, I've yet to be disappointed in its performance, and *knock on wood* it seems to be very solidly built. Sure, there's an ATC sensor, but despite the addition of cold when set to Hot, the water feels decently warm for a normal load of whites/towels. When I need true hot, I just turn the cold faucet off, and it doesn't affect the load at all. I suppose I'm thankful that the machine doesn't sense the tap being turned off. Would I take an original WP/Lady KM belt-drive or a KitchenAid direct-drive if I could? Absolutely. But given that those are precious gems that are hard to find, I'm happy that there is at least one machine on the market today that is a perfect balance of saving electricity while using a common-sense amount of water. I wish companies today would stop appealing to the lazy and ignorant of today's society, and instead revisit brilliant machines like the Speed Queens and belt drive Lady Kenmores and Maytags, and use the qualities that made them so great while also tweaking them to save water and energy as far as physics will allow. Just watch a video of the Whirlpool impeller style washer working and you'll see that the laws of physics are not on their side. |
Post# 761075 , Reply# 13   6/3/2014 at 04:15 (3,614 days old) by arbilab (Ft Worth TX (Ridglea))   |   | |
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Wouldn't 'undo' advances like inverter drive (wrote a patent proposal for one in the early 00s) or even constant-current brush drive, things that weren't practically possible in what we call the 'good old days' of capacitor/induction and various styles of clutchation. But let's not pull notions of 'energy efficiency' out of the air, or dismiss the inefficiency of remanufacturing on a shortened cycle. Even though it's China's energy doing the remanufacturing, the byproducts end up in OUR air and driving up OUR energy prices. Speaking of China, how inefficient is their institutional corruption? For that matter, how inefficient is OURS?
The slipping-belt wastes almost nothing. It sheds disproportionate load, the motor is burning less current given the near-constant-speed nature of induction motors. And generates precious little heat (waste energy) in doing so. The clunky old 3-belt Westy is even more elegant. That's a continuously-variable transmission in spin; they're trying to build those into cars for energy efficiency. It's harder to scale to that kind of power though, without making transmissions disposable (are they yet?). How hot does a legacy SQ fluid coupler get? If you can still touch it, it's not wasting much. Lastly, let's recall the lesson of the early lowflow toilets that saved half the water per cycle but needed 4 cycles to produce similar results. If as has marginally become the case, the machine doesn't adequately perform the duty for which it was purchased and operated then MOST of the energy of making, transporting and operating it is wasted. |
Post# 761229 , Reply# 14   6/3/2014 at 17:09 (3,614 days old) by murando531 (Augusta, Georgia - US)   |   | |
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Precisely. When you have to prewash dishes completely before loading, or run the cycle twice, or wash clothes multiple times to get proper results, the word "Eco" becomes a marketing term and not much else. You end up using just as much or more of the resources but you also waste a marginal amount of time along with it.
And you're right about CVT transmissions (pardon the redundant word along with the letter, it felt weird to type CV trans lol), some amount of slippage is "intended" to reduce wear on the engine as well. Even automatic trans. in normal cars have energy loss, as the torque converter works basically the same as the fluid-drive, just as arbilab stated. |
Post# 761262 , Reply# 16   6/3/2014 at 18:37 (3,613 days old) by washman (o)   |   | |
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Post# 761322 , Reply# 17   6/3/2014 at 21:21 (3,613 days old) by Unimatic1140 (Minneapolis)   |   | |
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