Small cast Iron BOB pipe organ blower

This is a little beast of a blower... 3450 RPM Brook-Compton-Parkinson motor of unknown horsepower, 4" outlet port, and more weight than I can even begin to pick up. I had a hard time dragging it across the floor.

The camera microphone doesn't pick up nearly as much as what is heard in person. It is actually much quieter with ductwork connected.

It is also blowing things around the room like crazy, but I didn't get it on video.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• vintage
• cast
• iron
• pipe
• organ
• blower
• BOB
• british
• bob3
• blowing

[Branchporter]

oddly enough, a blower running free like this takes more current and puts more load on the motor than one which is installed and has built up pressure! This is because it is harder to suck air through than it is to spin it around within the blower housing.

This is why a vacuum cleaner speeds up instead of slowing when you block the suction or exhaust.

Our organ repairman said that motors have been known to fail when a blower is operated when disconnected from the organ.

[Maxxarcade]

Exactly, that's why I only ran it for a few seconds :-)

Speaking of which... I always found it odd that furnace blower motors were always used so close to their ratings, sometimes over, but this blower seems to have plenty of headroom as far as motor torque. Then again, it is designed to last decades and decades.

[mythril4]

@Maxxarcade

simple experiment for ya

Take you everyday squirl cage fan from a furnas, set it on the ground and turn it on. Now take a board and slowly cover the output side up, as you do so you will notice that the fan speeds up due to less restriction of the air. The motor has the power to deliver the volume but not the static pressure, the blower rely on back pressure to properly deliver.

[Maxxarcade]

@mythril4 I'm aware of that. Blowers that can be run with no back pressure have much bigger motors.

[mythril4]

@Maxxarcade

Yep that is right.

The comment was half and half, partly for you and partly for the readers. Still I like a good powerfull blower, found one 40 miles outside of town, it is a squirl cage that is 10ft in diameter, I have been wanting to get some video of it. The thing uses a big motor with 8 belts. The wind is so strong you cannot stand in front of it without being blown off your feet. I guess it is for mines, has alot of static pressure and serious volume.

[Maxxarcade]

@mythril4 I would love to see a video of that :-)

[vegunited06]

could it pop a party baloon?

[kellogs211]

The organ i play on is three phase and that is about 5Horse Power.

[hdyudu]

i do season and routen work on my and my grama

furnace and the moter that drive the blower

in both furnaces are simaler to that one

but thay dont have so munch power that a skill

saw runs on like that organ blower sense it

needs to so munch air past reads in the organ

to make sound a furnace blower need just a bit

to move air in and out of the unit and the chiller evaprator box for a/c in the summer.

[etbuk]

Fantastic! But is very noisy to start... Compliments!