The Siren Board

My 3T22 was delivered to the farm today, and I got to wind it up with a drill and hear what one sounds like for the first time in person. Pretty impressive even with just a drill! Now is where my questions will come out, since this is my first siren project. The bearings are gonna need replacing on the motor for sure because when I spin the rotors they sound growly and gritty, and maybe as long as the motor shop will have it apart anyways, does it make sense to have them rewind it too? I plan on stripping all the paint off the siren. What is the best way to do so? How hard are the rotors to get off the shafts? Is it recommended to paint them, or will it throw the whole thing off balance?

As far as the bearings I personally would change them if they really needed it and I was going to be running it full power. I guess its really up to you on that one and if you want to pay for the bearings. Keep in mind that when the sirens fully put together you'll get a alot rattling and stuff so that might be what you're hearing. As far as the rewind, thats not something you do unless you need it, rewinding the motor is usually done if the motor is toast. Last I knew that is a pretty expensive process (i would guess upwards of 500) and isn't something I think would be worth it until its needed.

The rest of you questions I'll leave for a few of the others on here than are more qualified than I am to answer them!

I spun it up with a drill with it broken down to just the motor, the stator, and the rotors. And that was the sound I heard. Good to know! I really hate that their motors couldn't handle more than 15 minutes of full power. We have 240V single phase service coming into the farm, and use a phase converter to power 3 different motors to spread out the power load. Other motors either run off of DC or single phase AC. If we ran everything off single phase, we'd be popping the high voltage fuse that covers our transformer. We have a 50 HP 3-phase motor that we run on our air pump (identical to a Thunderbolt blower) on our grain drying air system on the farm and we sometimes run it for weeks straight, 24/7. I plan on running the 3T22 off full power as soon as I can get a 3-phase power cord from my local electrical store, put a plug on it and a plug into our big 240v socket. That way I can run it through the control panel, and the timer if I can find one. I will also be heading to a bolt store where I can purchase all stainless-steel bolts, nuts, washers, lock washers, etc. to redo the whole siren.

I powered my 2T22 with a TriStar EXL vacuum cleaner; I will try to record a video soon

Nah, I wanna power it up correctly when I run mine. I have just began to put it together and so far I have only done the bottom intake.

I really hate that their motors couldn't handle more than 15 minutes of full power.

welcome to economics. it would be unwise to specify a continuous-duty motor for an application that will generally see a few minutes use per month.

welcome to economics. it would be unwise to specify a continuous-duty motor for an application that will generally see a few minutes use per month.

There is also the factor of reliability my friend. What if there are several tornado warnings in a day??? Lives are more important than a silly motor. Motors can be replaced, lives cannot. Sentry sirens uses all continuous duty motors in their sirens, and I have no idea what some idiot at Federal Signal was thinking to put a duty cycle on their motors. We have all continuous duty motors on our farm, and they get used for 2 weeks straight 24/7 in the fall and that's it for the year. That would add up to about the same amount of time a typical siren in tornado alley gets used in a year. Give me 5 reasons why that would be unwise.

Sentry does use fan-cooled motors, but that's no big deal when you got a big shroud of perforated sheet metal protecting the motor(s) from rain. FS, however, seems to be more geared towards raking up maximum profit by making products that do meet specifications but don't quite go above and beyond.

Those motors are tough, they can take way more than 15 minutes run time.