Stewart-Warner balancer upgrade?

[dwilliams]

The amplifier head on my Stewart-Warner crank balancer is starting to get flaky again. It cost $600 to get it repaired last time. I'm thinking it might be time to move up from 1970 analog electronics.

I thought I'd seen some PC-based upgrades for the old SW balancers somewhere, but now I can't seem to find anything in my piles of "stuff."

Has anyone seen a digital upgrade for the SW lately?

[usaracing]

Call Gary at GH balancer service 773-509-1988. He is the GO TO Guy for anything to do with a stewart warner rig. He should know first hand if any upgrades are available.

[jimivice]

I might be late with this post. I also have a Stewart-Balancer and Gary Hildreth of GH Balancing is the Man. He was the chief engineer at Stewart-Warner. I think he is the only one who services these machines. He has helped me with my machine quite a few times. I'm pretty sure he has all the necessary components to repair or upgrade your machine.

[headman]

GH is well known for keeping the old machines in service.

What I expect dwilliams is looking for is an electronic conversion or upgrade.

Most companie$ make money convincing you to buy an entire machine.

It would not be very difficult to put something together with current data acquisition. And retain the SW frame.

[Martin Faulks]

The amplifier head on my Stewart-Warner crank balancer is starting to get flaky again.

I'm currently repairing a Jackson & Bradwell machine of similar generation. I don't know if you have the same coupler pickup, but this uses two leaf spring pickups effectively (one per axis) and these are metal-foil gauged in a half Wheatstone bridge config per spring. On this machine the gages have gone noisy, and it may well be similar on yours? I'm going to replace the gages and go from there.

[Wolfplace]

The amplifier head on my Stewart-Warner crank balancer is starting to get flaky again. It cost $600 to get it repaired last time. I'm thinking it might be time to move up from 1970 analog electronics.

I thought I'd seen some PC-based upgrades for the old SW balancers somewhere, but now I can't seem to find anything in my piles of "stuff."

Has anyone seen a digital upgrade for the SW lately?

=
Contact T&S Machine
I was talking to them a couple of weeks ago & he was telling me about a PC based upgrade for the Winnona & I believe he said he can do any older analog machine
http://www.tnsmachines.com/default.htm

[BCjohnny]

The amplifier head on my Stewart-Warner crank balancer is starting to get flaky again.

I'm currently repairing a Jackson & Bradwell machine of similar generation. I don't know if you have the same coupler pickup, but this uses two leaf spring pickups effectively (one per axis) and these are metal-foil gauged in a half Wheatstone bridge config per spring. On this machine the gages have gone noisy, and it may well be similar on yours? I'm going to replace the gages and go from there.

How are my gauges going, Martin?

The cermet thingy should be here this week, sometime.

Welcome to the forum.

John.

[dwilliams]

> Wheatstone

The SW uses plungers in coils. The workpiece sits on rollers on the ends of leaf springs, so the whole thing bounces the plungers up and down to provide a signal to the amplifier head. Modern machines apparently use fixed columns and strain gauges.


> T&S

I'll check 'em out!

[Martin Faulks]

Hi John,

Thanks for the welcome. Yes good news have re-gaged your springs, will be interesting to see if the new gage grid area / possible change in gage factor will upset things, but guess we will have to suck-it and see. There will be a number of possible options if so: change the amplifier gain, or the amount of spring pre-load. The only issue I can see there (if gage factor is higher than the originals), will be running out of pre-load deflection if you like with a -ve displacement. This will cause the spring to go past the null position and cause linearity issues- or translated into giving the incorrect weight adjustment indication, and possibly the wrong sign John I think you will be the only guy in town always adding weight Joke!! Don't worry will calibrate out one way or the other, been doing it for years for Schaevitz