Frontload Bolt-Down Experiment

[americansuds]

I hate having to baby a machine. In 1990 I serviced a great albeit overly complicated industrial frontloader by Milnor...you could either use it as an automatic or completely manual, all by toggle switches...coolness! CONTROL,COMPLETE CONTROL! Bendix offered a machine like that as seen in the old repair manual posted on this site. But that has nothing to do with what I was going to write...haha.
Anyway...i want to conduct an experiment...putting the massive shipping bolts back in a common small-port modern frontloader (used of course, lol), maybe adding an extra strap-down, then bolting the whole unit down and see what it does. They run fine with nothing in them but i know usually if you only have one or two items in them then they wont even go in to spin...so i hope it will go right through all of its spins normally as a bolt-down unit. Without shaking everything off the wall down the hall. And why? To have fun and maybe drink some beers while staring at suds of course...hahaha. And to see if it will work...i'm 85% engineer. And it will be awhile before I can have a place where i can pour a pad for my Giant Wascomat therefore.....
so...should i do it? I can find a little fl cheap used, all it has to do is be able to spin. Prolly a Frigidaire small-port.

 

[dj-gabriele]

To do something like that you have to deactivate the anti-imbalance system first, otherwise, bolting the machine or not won't have a difference at all and it will continue to do balancing till it's satisfied as, anyway, the machine doesn't shake at all in that phase as the drum spins only marginally faster than standard tumbling.

 

[americansuds]

i thought so...

That had occured to me. I might still try it anyway, just as an excuse to drink beer and play with another machine. Thanks for your input though! You know, I just realized that I have never had an Italian beer. Wine yes of course, but never a beer.

 

[favorit]

IMHO the trick could work provided you'll make what Gabriele said and you'll never spin over 500-600 rpm ... anyway it won't survive very long.

Household machines haven't the same size bearings as commercial ones - eg Supremewhirlpool's Primus pics - also the Little Giants are 10 centimetres deeper than same sized household mieles

I add also that, having however ubersized bearings, hard mount machines are more prone to bearings wear, so they can't spin as fast as soft mount ones - eg those big commercial soft mounts from where spun laundry goes straight to drying ironers -

Beers in Italy and France and German wines ... stay away from commonplaces
Germay has also very nice wines from Rhine/Mosel valleys - eg Gewuertztraminer and Mueller-Turgau , indeed ... true vintage transnational europeism in wines

Gewürztraminer - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Now some links to italian beers - aside of industrial factories (eg Heineken, Moretti) we' ve plenty of small local hi end producers :

http://www.birramenabrea.com (... indeed no more so small lately)

Home - Fabbrica di Pedavena

Una favola da scoprirenel cuore delle Dolomiti II 17 febbraio 1897 nasceva la fabbrica di

www.birrapedavena.it

http://www.birrabusalla.it/ famous for the Castagnasca (chestnut beer)

http://www.mondobirra.org/birracastagna.htm other chestnut beers

and back to washers, from Germany... a brewing toploader ! It's a vintage non-spinning horizontal axis Constructa

http://www.wambier.de

Realbeer.com: Beer News: Priest brews in washing machine

 

[toggleswitch2]

Toggle switches = complete control?

HMMMMMMMMMM.

Sounds like you are having fun while learning.

 

[supremewhirlpol]

I looks like the shipping bolts bolt the drum to the back of the machine. I lot of the force will be on the back of the machine. I'm guessing that of you do, the back of the cabinet will either bend at the bottom and top, or literally rip the cabinet off the bottom part of the frame. It would be violent, sort of like what happens when you don't bolt down a commercial FL properly and the machine unseats itself from the floor and goes into a wall during extract. I like your Wascomat though.

 

[americansuds]

That would be one heck of a video...a Wascomat flying through a wall...a little bit depressing of course but still. Thanks everyone for the input...when I find a beat up machine to do the experiment I will of course document it with a camera.