Pb or Sn based babbitt

[Armorer]

Does anyone have any experience with babbitt? Across from our shop is an elevator service shop and the owner hooked me up with a segmented brick of what he calls "babbitt". I had gone looking for lead because I was told they used it in elevator service. He says it melts like lead and when I tried to scratch it with a fingernail I couldn't, but I could scratch it with a 10 penny nail. I'm going to try and upload a couple of pics and maybe someone can help me identify it and it's uses.

[madsenshooter]

They're still in business, not much of a website, but there's a contact form. It's supposed to be a nickle-copper toughened babbitt. A little of that added to your WW will give you some good high velocity bullets! http://www.jacksonwheeler.com/ They can tell you what percentages of various metals are in it. In reading some other posts on Tuftex, I guess they're not too good at getting back to you. I know it doesn't take much babbitt to a pot full of WW to give you one very tough bullet. I've had bullets cast of alloys made with it up to 2450fps. That's out of a Krag, I'm pretty sure they'll do better out of something with more powder room.

[JIMinPHX]

Babbit varies quite a bit, but almost all of it is good for hardening up a boolit casting alloy. If you have a chance to lay your hands on babit, grab it first & ask questions later.

I'm a little surprised to hear that an elevator guy would give away babbit. That stuff is still used for the bearings in traction type elevators. The babbit bearings wear & then need to be melted down & recast every so often. At least a little fresh material usually needs to be added each time.

The next time that you are talking to the elevator service guys, ask them if they have any spare "frequency drives" laying around. Those cool little gizmos give you variable speed control over a 3-phase motor. They're what makes a modern elevator accelerate & decelerate smoothly. They're real handy for making a lathe, milling machine, or drill press more user friendly. I used to repair a lot of the Mitsubishi Z-series drives for the elevator guys in NYC when I lived in that area. A lot of the "blown up" ones are actually not that hard to repair if you know what to look for.

[Armorer]

I'll keep that in mind Jim, thanks for the heads up! And Frank, the guy I got it from said they don't use it much anymore. I might be able to score some more, and from what y'all are saying, it sounds like it would be well worth my time.
So I reckon it's just trial and error as far as adding it to my alloy. I have been sort of dragging my feet on buying a hardness tester for whatever reason, and I guess it's about time I bought one. Looks like it's going to be raining here for the next couple of days, but I might get a chance to do some casting this weekend and test it out. Thank you for the info.

[Tom W.]

The stuff is great, makes some hard boolits, too. I used to get it from the man that supplied the sawmill when I worked there...




I need to go visit him one day....

[shotman]

dont use it for shot in a shot maker but casting is good straight they most likely use it in the cabel ends to make a slip proof end. Same as well drillers use it in the end that goes in the drill stem. I friend give me about 500lbs that they were going to pay someone to pick it up . you know lead is classed as haz mat. wont be long before PO stops letting it be shipped

[Armorer]

Shotman, that is exactly what he said they do with it. We used to get wire rope chokers and slings that were made up the same way when I was working construction. You say I can cast it straight? Any idea of the hardness? Tom, that's what I'm looking for. I'd like a tough boolit for my .30 cal and even my .270 if I start to cast for it, but not to brittle. I'm also definitely going to see if he will give me any more.

[madsenshooter]

It would likely be a BHN of 23 straight. Take a look on Rotometal's site above, the stuff isn't cheap. I notice a #4 on it, it's probably about equal to Roto's #4 hardware babbitt, perhaps with a little Cu for toughness. Even that runs $3.75/lb.

[evan price]

The next time that you are talking to the elevator service guys, ask them if they have any spare "frequency drives" laying around. Those cool little gizmos give you variable speed control over a 3-phase motor. They're what makes a modern elevator accelerate & decelerate smoothly. They're real handy for making a lathe, milling machine, or drill press more user friendly. I used to repair a lot of the Mitsubishi Z-series drives for the elevator guys in NYC when I lived in that area. A lot of the "blown up" ones are actually not that hard to repair if you know what to look for.

I have, LITERALLY, a car trunk full of good used Mitsubishi Freqrol Z200 460V 3hp variable speed drives I removed under a PM contract at an auto assembly plant. I've got some of the programming keypads and a couple copies of the manual. I've never found anyone who had any interest in them whatsoever.

[JIMinPHX]

If those keypads are FR-PU01E type, then they are worth as much as the drive. That keypad has been out of production for as long as the Z drives & you can't program a Z-drive without one. There are very few of them floating around these days & that is what keeps interest in the Z-drives low.

The Z200 series is not quite as smooth as the Z300 series was, but they are plenty good for machines that aren't under NC control. The smaller Z drives actually outperformed the newer A series drives in servo applications because they had a faster closed loop response time.

The only kicker with the drives that you have is going to be the voltage that they run on. They will need 460vac as a primary & not everybody has that floating around in his garage. You can program them to run a 220-volt 3-ph motor, but the primary voltage needs to be 460. You can probably run them on a single phase primary if you cut the HP rating in half, but you can't run them on a lower primary voltage.

You say that they are 3hp drives. Did you mean 3-phase? or are they also 3Hp? A 3 HP would have a nameplate model number like FR-Z240UL2.2K. FR-Z2 is the 200 series. 40 is 460-volt primary power & 2.2K is the kilowatt rating that equals 3HP. A larger K number means more HP. Anything 10HP & up probably also has a brake unit inside it.

It's unusual to find a full size Z200 series drive in a kw rating that small. Most of the 2.2k drives were the FR-Z024 series, which had a smaller frame size & more limited control features. I don't remember if they took the same parameter unit (keypad) as the larger ones, but I think that they did. The later A series had different parameter units for the 024 versions.

If you can find some board members that have 460-volts available & would like to add variable speed control to any of their shop toys, I'll be happy to help explain to them how to make things work.

[JIMinPHX]

If those keypads are FR-PU01E type, then they are worth as much as the drive. That keypad has been out of production for as long as the Z drives & you can't program a Z-drive without one. There are very few of them floating around these days & that is what keeps interest in the Z-drives low.

The Z200 series is not quite as smooth as the Z300 series was, but they are plenty good for machines that aren't under NC control. The smaller Z drives actually outperformed the newer A series drives in servo applications because they had a faster closed loop response time.

The only kicker with the drives that you have is going to be the voltage that they run on. They will need 460vac as a primary & not everybody has that floating around in his garage. You can program them to run a 220-volt 3-ph motor, but the primary voltage needs to be 460. You can probably run them on a single phase primary if you cut the HP rating in half, but you can't run them on a lower primary voltage.

You say that they are 3hp drives. Did you mean 3-phase? or are they also 3Hp? A 3 HP would have a nameplate model number like FR-Z240UL2.2K. FR-Z2 is the 200 series. 40 is 460-volt primary power & 2.2K is the kilowatt rating that equals 3HP. A larger K number means more HP. Anything 10HP & up probably also has a brake unit inside it.

It's unusual to find a full size Z200 series drive in a kw rating that small. Most of the 2.2k drives were the FR-Z024 series, which had a smaller frame size & more limited control features. I don't remember if they took the same parameter unit (keypad) as the larger ones, but I think that they did. The later A series had different parameter units for the 024 versions.

If you can find some board members that have 460-volts available & would like to add variable speed control to any of their shop toys, I'll be happy to help explain to them how to make things work.

[Tom W.]

Nickle Babbitt has no lead in it, according to the msds that we got with the stuff. I have cast some straight .44 mag boolits with it and they were light, filled out really well, and those I recovered from the backstop could almost have been loaded again.

I've since gotten wiser and now use my limited supply to add to my w/w alloy. It still makes the boolits rather hard, and the massive tin content isn't so merrily wasted...


BTW, We were getting #4 nickle Babbitt, and it's mostly tin.

[Armorer]

Yeah Tom, thats probably where this will end up. Supplementing my WW boolits.

[evan price]

Yes, these are the 2.2Kw drives. We had several of them setup in our shop as demo units once upon a time- we only had 220-3p power but I scrounged a 2:1 3-p transformer out of surplus junk and that gave us 440-3p to run the units.

I had a pallet full of the next two sizes larger than this one (Can't remember the exact sizes- maybe 3.7 kw and 7.5 kw?) and the large ones were H U G E as in two of them side by side wouldn't fit on a pallet. I did save the capacitors out of those drives, they are about soup-can sized- I have a few dozen of them. Scrapped them drives out because I figured nobody would want drives that big and they were in the way, and they had that huge aluminum heat sink on the back. These smaller ones I had stashed in the trunk of an old car and forgot about for what, ten years now? Anyway, I know I have about a dozen or more of them. The parameter units were supposedly with each drive but they got taken off and stored separately in my garage for "safe"keeping and I'd have to find them again. I should have about ten I believe as well as one or two copies of the original Mitsubishi manuals.
I used to be an automation engineer who contracted for "a major Japanese automaker with plants in the Ohio area" so I managed to scrounge up a whole lot of really neat surplus automation eqpt. back in the day.