The upiddy girl is ill

[rmack898]

I was working on the pulleys for the burke mill 2 nights ago and after chucking up the roughed out blank I turned at work, I powered up the UG and waited the 2 minutes it takes to warm up and the green start lamp to light. After the green light came on I pulled the lever to start the spindle and all I could hear was a relay click. I powered it down and went for a restart and got the same results.

For the last 2 years she has been running like a top and never let me down but now I had this real sinking feeling as I have seen many nightmare threads over on PM with guys trying to troubleshoot this ancient technology.

I started pulling covers, reading faint schematics, and started an appeal for help thread over on PM as I am now one guys with a nightmare. It didn't take long to discover that the 2 big thyrotrons were not working (they didn't glow). So I traced the wires back to a transformer that wasn't getting any power. It took me one full night of carefully cutting wire ties and going through big bundles of wires to trace them back to their source. I finally traced the 2 wires in question to where they disappeared into a conduit that led to the back of the lathe out of sight. Tonight I moved the lathe out to find a back panel, that once removed revealed another panel cover. In there I found a big terminal strip of neatly labeled wires and 5 more transformers. The wires that feed the transformer that feed the thyrotrons is fed by a transformer in the compartment at the back of the lathe that has a cover that is protected by the first cover that I removed after I moved the lathe. Are you confused? I sure as hell am.

The transformer in question has line voltage on the primary side and zero output on the secondary side. I was unable to check it for an open as it is buried deep and I will have to remove a bunch of stuff to get it out. For those that understand sparktricity better than I, does that sound like a bad transformer to you?

The upiddy girl has put the brakes on the burke mill.

[Paychk]

Sure does....

But it can also be an open (break) in the wire between the two transformers or may be there is a fuse/breaker between them?

Links to manuals

http://www.bbssystem.com/manuals/monarch1942.pdf

http://www.bbssystem.com/manuals/monarch1965.pdf

It looks like the 65 manual is closest to yours, it has the schematics and a trouble shooting chart. You may want to start with the chart and follow it just to verify the open isn't some form of safety kicking in.

[GWIZ]

Yes,
I have had good luck with repairing open transformers. that is most of the opens are where the wire from the coil is soldered to the terminal or exit wire joins.
most break at the joint or some back 1" next to the steel core.

[Paychk]

here is the trouble shooting chart:

and the electrical section to include schematics

[rmack898]

Thanks for the reassurance. The wires that connect the 2 tranformers are good. I guess I will be digging into the back of the lathe tomorrow to pull out the transformer.

[OLD MAN]

Might be like a horse with a broken leg. Just sayn................

[Lew Hartswick]

You did check to be sure there is power to the first transformer.
...lew...

[GWIZ]

I'm not sure I'm looking at this right. being on dial up I cant down load the pdf. manuals.

It looks like there is two transformers one for each tube, it would be unlikely that two transformers would go bad at the same time.

In other words at least one tube should be getting filament voltage. if I am seeing it right, at 2.5 volts the filament may not be very bright.

[Paychk]

Gwiz

would it help if I broke the schematics down to one page per file?

I converted to JPG, might be easier to D/L

[GWIZ]

Thank you .
The smaller ones are fine.
It's only the two ~50 Mb manuals that will take me 3 hrs to down load each.