The Siren Board

As most of you know Hamilton County Ohio (Cincinnati) purchased 137 sirens in 2010 and took ANS 4 years to have them installed. In April 2016 Werden Electric received the bid for maintenance of the 137 new sirens and the 64 old battery operated sirens (32 Federal, 32 ASC older types). From April to July I have personally visited/maintained over 50 of these sirens new and old. One of the first sirens I had problems with was the siren at Perry St. in Mt Healthy and the problem was the slip ring and brushes, and brush holder burnt up. Being under warranty I called ASC and they said it was officially hit by lightning and therefore not under warranty. OK I bought this story, but was skeptical. The next couple months I had three more "slip ring, brush holder" problems so my investigation of the other failures yielded a startling fact that can only be explained as a manufacturer defect.the distance between the brush holder and the slip ring is anywhere from 7/16 inch to a little less than 3/4 inch. Calling the brush manufacturer they demand only an 1/8 inch distance between the holder and slip ring. I took some measurements of:

Brush and spring 2.62 inches
Holder from cap to holder edge 2.00 inches
Space to slip ring from holder .4375 (min)

Therefore as you can see the brush which pulls 135 amps is only .182 inches of tension and wear of a brush before it malfunctions. These sirens were made in 2010 and I have seen others prior to this date have the same problem. I have asked ASC to send a crew down here to rebuild the assembly as they are under warranty. I would also think this could be a national/international recall of the T-128 siren.

Wow, I won't be surprised if they recall it. I really hope they do if this is a re-occurring issue with the pre-2010 T-128's. If they recall it, I will be ready to head around the state to record maintenance.

I don't think there will be any massive T-128 recall unless enough customers complain and present ASC with a lawsuit or twelve. The story about the defective T-128 "being hit by lightning" would already draw legal attention on its own because it puts ASC's website service claim in hot water:

ASC also provides full service and maintenance contracts during and after the warranty period. This ensures that the system is maintained in peak condition and to factory specifications.

SuperBanshee wrote:I don't think there will be any massive T-128 recall unless enough customers complain and present ASC with a lawsuit or twelve. The story about the defective T-128 "being hit by lightning" would already draw legal attention on its own because it puts ASC's website service claim in hot water:

ASC also provides full service and maintenance contracts during and after the warranty period. This ensures that the system is maintained in peak condition and to factory specifications.

Yes, but it doesn't specifically state that it would be free. It just says that they will fully repair a siren regardless of it's on their dime or yours.

That's sad. I honestly would have thought that the t-128 wouldn't be a siren to have problems like that...

I suppose I should clarify from what was stated earlier - while I understand Clayton's account, there's more than one side to each story. For the time-being I feel it is wiser to study each defective T-128 that turns up.

Meanwhile, I have observed some malfunctioning T-128s in action however I never got a chance to look inside them. The first case is from North Fond Du Lac. One of their T-128s installed in 2006 used an older control array marked "CD&F". Its average pitch was 440 Hertz. Until 2009 it seemed to work fine.
Then its pitch began to drag during the test on multiple occasions before it finally gave up in 2010. The sound was more reminiscent of a dying cow. Pitch would drop to 376 Hertz at worst.
It was initially presumed this was because of bad batteries however nothing was officially concluded. This siren was replaced in 2010 with what appeared to be an entirely new T-128 with the more common post-2006 controls.
Attached are photos of the 2006 siren prior to removal. Notice ASC and CD&F stickers appear to have been peeled off.

"Mr. SuperBanshee"

The control cabinets never had stickers on them. We have one of those and I believe it is dated 1998 to 2000.

UPDATE: We have had five or six more sirens "hit by lightning" and have trouble with slip rings. Dale sent a tech down to repair two sirens and never took care of the problem of the space. E.M.A. was instructed to leave me out of the loop as they did not want to officially explain their defect. In the mean time the brush manufacturer stated that the brushes ASC uses are only good for 49 amps. The T-128 on the negative post pulls 135 to 145 amps. ASC knew this was a problem possibly as far back as 2006. They went to another design using 8 brushes per wire for the negative and 8 brushes for the positive.

Lightning won't do that to collector rings. That's from excessive amperage. Lightning strikes will ground the motor and blow up the controls. The only damage to the collector rings would be in one small spot. If that siren took a lightning hit to do that much damage to the rings they would have to replace everything on that pole, because it would go straight through the controls to ground.

Clayton thought about adding another brush holder on the opposite side and paralleling the brushes? That would drop the amperage across each brush by 50%.

For everybody that doesn't know, for years the T-128 used the same collector rings as a Penetrator. The max amperage in that application is 65 amps for a single phase P-15. Plus the rings had #10 brass studs on the bottom that you attached the wires to, and would strip out if you looked at them wrong.