The Electrical experimenter
The Electrical experimenter
The Electrical experimenter
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i6 THE ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTER May, 1917<br />
Powerful Electro =Magnets Perform the Work of Many Men<br />
<strong>The</strong> ordinary work of a man loading a marked manner tlie practical application<br />
pig iron from the ground upon a railway and efficiency of large electro-magnets used<br />
car was from 12 to 13 tons per day. <strong>The</strong> industrially. <strong>The</strong> lirst illustration shows a<br />
gigantic electro-magnet measuring<br />
62 inches in diameter and swung<br />
from a crane at the plant of the<br />
Crucible Steel Company at Pittsburgh.<br />
This mighty magnet has<br />
been photographed in the act of lifting<br />
17 steel billets, each weighing<br />
575 lbs., or a total of 8,925. It takes<br />
but a moment's reflection to readily<br />
conceive just how much man-power<br />
would be required to move this<br />
same weight of steel, not to mention<br />
the time occupied in moving it.<br />
A single operator, in this case the<br />
man operating the crane, lowers the<br />
magnet ontd the steel bars and when<br />
in contact or nearly so, he closes the<br />
switch supplying the magnet with<br />
<strong>The</strong> Crucible Steel Company Have in Use at <strong>The</strong>ir<br />
Pittsburgh Plant This Gigantic 62-inch Electromagnet.<br />
It Can Lift 4' , Tons of Steel Bars and the<br />
Trip of a Switch Releases the Entire Load Instantly.<br />
This Class of Work Spells "Economy" in Big<br />
Letters and Foundries Everywhere Are Rapidly<br />
Awakening to the Fact.<br />
lifting magnet, however, nas rendered it<br />
unnecessary for this laborious work to be<br />
performed by human eflfort, and the results,<br />
as given in the unloading of the<br />
steamer, Enmii L. Fisher, at Indiana Harbor,<br />
Ind., are given in brief below:<br />
With a cargo of 4,U(JU.0OO pounds of pig<br />
iron, the time required to unload this vessel<br />
with twenty-eight men was two days<br />
and two nights, which corresponds to about<br />
3,()00 pounds per man per hour, or about 15<br />
tons per day of ten hours. When the<br />
lifting magnet was introduced, the total<br />
time required for unloading was reduced<br />
to eleven hours and was done by two men,<br />
whose labor consisted in manipulating the<br />
controllers in the cages of the cranes. Thus<br />
two men and two magnets duplicated the<br />
work of twenty-eight men in less than onefourth<br />
the time. Under these conditions<br />
the handling capacity of a man and a magnet<br />
was nearly one thousand tons in eleven<br />
hours, or about 900 tons per day of 10<br />
hours. This is fifty times as much as was<br />
accomplished by hand labor, or twenty<br />
times as much as is possible even under<br />
scientifically managed manual labor. Furthermore,<br />
the operation was chargeable<br />
with less than one-fourth the overhead<br />
charges, while the vessels were enabled to<br />
double their number of productive trips.<br />
<strong>The</strong> lifting magnet has been adapted for<br />
the handling of materials in all branches<br />
of the iron and steel industry. It is used<br />
for handling pig iron, scrap, castings, billets,<br />
tubes, rails, plates, crop ends ; for loading<br />
and unloading cars and vessels, and for<br />
handling skull-cracker balls and rniscellaneous<br />
magnetic material. In fact it seems<br />
to be axiomatic that wherever magnetic<br />
material, and especially raw material, is to<br />
be handled in any considerable quantity, a<br />
lifting magnet can be used to advantage<br />
and will he a profitable investment.<br />
<strong>The</strong> accompanying illustration shows in<br />
electric current. <strong>The</strong> magnet instantly<br />
becomes alive and exerts<br />
several tons of magnetic tractive<br />
power and holds the billets to its<br />
face securely, as pictured in the illustration.<br />
<strong>The</strong> crane may swing<br />
along for several hundred feet, carrying<br />
its suspended load, and as<br />
soon as it reaches the desired location<br />
the magnet is lowered ; when<br />
the operator opens the switch the<br />
magnet instantly releases its 4' 2 tons<br />
of steel.<br />
<strong>The</strong> second illustration shows a<br />
powerful electro-magnet at work in<br />
the yards of the Chicago, Milwaukee<br />
and St. Paul Railroad's West<br />
Milwaukee shop, the magnet measuring<br />
43 inches in diameter and lifting<br />
in this case a locomotive drive<br />
wheel. <strong>The</strong> lifting magnet is an attractive<br />
proposition to-day and not<br />
only appeals in large sizes but in the very<br />
small sizes as well. <strong>The</strong> small hand type<br />
electro-magnet is particularly efticacious for<br />
picking up quantities of iron nails, screws,<br />
etc., in hardware stores and stock rooms<br />
and finds application in a thousand and one<br />
different ways daily.<br />
43-inch Magnet Lifting a Locomotive Drive<br />
Wheel at the West Milwaukee Shop of the<br />
C. M. & St. Paul Railway. Another Instance<br />
of What the Lifting Magnet Is Capable of<br />
Doing.<br />
THE ELECTRIC HEATER FOR THE<br />
. KITCHEN BOILER.<br />
<strong>The</strong> accompanying semi-sectional view<br />
of an ordinary kitchen boiler shows how<br />
a recently perfected electric water heater<br />
is attached to it. This heater heats the<br />
water before you turn the faucet and not<br />
—some time afterward. <strong>The</strong> tank is always<br />
charged with scalding water at any temperature<br />
you wish<br />
up to 200=F.<br />
(212 ° F. boiling<br />
point), or enough<br />
heat for about<br />
five baths—always<br />
on tap.<br />
<strong>The</strong> heater has<br />
six steps—and the<br />
regulator is a si.xpoint<br />
current control.<br />
When no<br />
water is being<br />
drawn the heater<br />
will probably be<br />
cut eritirely out so<br />
that no electricity<br />
is being used.<br />
<strong>The</strong>n as some<br />
water is drawn<br />
the regulator picks<br />
out that step of<br />
the heater which<br />
will pump back<br />
into the boiler the<br />
same amount of<br />
heat that is drawn<br />
from the faucet<br />
in the hot water.<br />
-At the sixth step<br />
the regulator applies<br />
two full<br />
.horsepower, storing<br />
heat at 1007o<br />
An Electric Heating<br />
Unit That Fits the<br />
Kitchen Boiler.<br />
efficiency. It is claimed that this particular<br />
electric water heater will operate on<br />
IS to 20 per cent less energy than the circulation<br />
type heater, for the same monthly<br />
gallon production.<br />
<strong>The</strong> present heater has been specially designed<br />
to make it self-cleaning. Under<br />
tne intermittent operation of the thermal<br />
control there appears a slight but constant<br />
opening and closing of the split heating<br />
tube, which readily cracks off all scale and<br />
any precipitate forming on the tube. This<br />
deposit accumulating at the base of the<br />
heater is then easily flushed out of the full<br />
size l'4-inch drain. This self-cleaning<br />
feature is, perhaps, next to efficiency in importance<br />
to the housewife to whom a<br />
burned-out heater means not only needless<br />
expense but several days' interruption in<br />
the hot water service and a recent engineering<br />
report gives the e.xternal circulation<br />
type water heater four months in which to<br />
become absolutelv choked with scale.<br />
CAN SINK SUBMARINES BY<br />
WIRELESS, SAYS INVENTOR.<br />
Tlicodore Eichholz, a young engineer<br />
and architect of Pittsburgh, has invented a<br />
wireless device that may be used to destroy<br />
submarines by causing an explosion of<br />
gases that are always present in submersibles,<br />
he claims. For several years the inventor<br />
was connected with the United<br />
States Corps of Engineers.<br />
Mr. Fichholz stated that just recently<br />
a small experimental apparatus in his home<br />
on Xcville Island sunk a small "dummy"<br />
submarine in the Ohio River, five miles<br />
away. <strong>The</strong> destroyed model was of steel<br />
and submerged to a depth of ten feet.<br />
.Ml submarines while under water are<br />
propelled by electric storage batteries<br />
which throw off a gas that pervades the<br />
hull. This gas, Eichholz says, he detonates<br />
by the wireless current and destruction<br />
follows. <strong>The</strong> apparatus will be submitted<br />
to the l'..S. Government at once.