Help -HME OP 55 flywheel Crank Press Jammed.

[skfras]

Hello there

We are currently building a fairly complicated press tool and we are using an old HME op-55 Key Clutch press(Flywheel Crank Press).

The press has been working great and have had little problems, these old presses are built to last. but i have come into a slight problem. I have been testing different hights with the press to obtain better results on our tool. the problem i have is that i set the press slightly too low so when i engaged the clutch the press went down. hit its base position and ceased, at that point i cut the power to it. so to put it short i have a 55 tonne press ceased in its closed position and im stuck. i cannot get the press to disengage. i have tried manually reversing the flywheel but it just bounces, both directions. it is not doing to move, i have also tried to increase the hight but the nut that is used to dictate the hight of the top tool is also locked and will not move. im just wondering if anybody out that has any experience with these large flywheel crank presses.
is there something i can do to relieve it? has anybody had one of these presses jam?

the tool we have made is using some very strong springs in them which i believe has caused the jam. i actually had to make some pins to increase the pressure of some of the springs, when this mod was made on its first run was when it happened.

do these presses have some kind of pressure system that disengages the cluth when there is too much load?
if so how can i reverse it?

any information you can give me would be great.

Thank you for your time
Fraser

 

[ajack1]

Ouch, not a good place to be Fraser.

If everything you have tried has failed using some REAL force, you are down to some pretty drastic action.

If you have any ram and bed space free try putting some hydraulic jacks in, I have seen that work in the past, does the press have tie bars on it if so try removing them as well. If that fails you are down to flame cutting part of the tooling or the pitman screw.

 

[MikeHalloran]

IF you can find something to push on, try jacking the crankpin to the side, opposite to the normal direction of rotation.

Be careful; you've got a lot of strain energy stored there.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[ksukall]

you can try losing the gibes on side of ram or you can try to unbolt the bearing caps on the crank

 

[ksukall]

P.S. when you get it unstuck check you bearing to see if you broke any Also check spring clearance to see if thy are bottoming Because the next the die may explode if you go to a bigger press. Been their dun that, no cool

 

[MiketheEngineer]

I am NOT into these things - but I do remember one that did get hung. I was a very young engineer at the time. They sprayed liquid nitrogen on it to shrink a part of it. It came right apart. And liquid nitrogen is relatively cheap.

NOW - I don't know exactly what part needs to shrink - but maybe you do. AND IT DID WORK!! I watched it happen.

Good Luck

 

[timeline1968]

I hate to post frivolously, as I have no better suggestion than what is posted, but I do have a similar story. The press that we got stuck was a 125 ton Bliss and the eventual solution was:

Torch it apart (cut the die in half).

That was a costly mistake to say the least.

Good luck.

 

[MartinGlaeser]

Hi Fraser

I hope you haven't gotten too drastic yet, this was a fairly regular problem for me a couple of jobs ago. We had semi skilled press setters setting mechanical presses from 40 to 180 tonnes. some of the machines had hydraulic overload cylinders in their ram however the HME machines did not. Although the method is a bit brutal we always got the tool out of our open front presses without losing the tool or any major press components.

The method was to build out from the back of the press frame using 50mm steel parallels until the packing was close to the bottom plate of the press. We had two wedges cut and machined from 50 mm square, about 500mm long tapering from 50mm to nothing and these were used with a sledge hammer to drive the tool out of the press. It takes a bit of sweat and you need a couple of guys as you don't want to get too tired, swing and hit the tool rather than the wedge.

A word of warning about using a hydraulic powerpack to further open the press. The one major failure we had was a straight sided 150t machine where we used four 100t enerpac cylinders to relieve pressure on the tool. The press frame broke and the machine was scrapped.

Good luck

Martin

 

[Darkala]

I have several HME presses mostly 100 ton. When they get stuck on bottom there are a few holes in the flywheel near the crank and you can stick a short shaft 1.5diax6inches of steel in there and then use a bar and hammer on the clutch until you come off bottom.

However i imagine you already took care of this problem...