Check out these gigantic blowers!

[electrolux137]

Check out these gigantic pipe organ blowers -- literally vacuum cleaners in reverse! The photo is of ONE (of a dozen or so) blowers from the world's largest organ at Atlantic City Convention Hall in New Jersey. Note the eight fans, which are about 30" in diameter! This is an EIGHT-STAGE motor!!

Then the blower in the YouTube video is from the now extinct Barton organ at the old Chicago Stadium. The gigantic blower motor is ONE HUNDRED HORSEPOWER and the fan housing is SEVENTEEN AND A HALF FEET LONG!!!

 

[s31463221]

Charles

Those are AMAZING!!! Is that a recent photo, or did they get destroyed in the fire too? Great video, I loved hearing those blowers firing up!

 

[tolivac]

Interesting films on the Chicago Stadium Barton Organ-Did like the scene where the compressor was started.On YouTube there are also film clips of the Convention Hall Organ blowers being started-just as thrilling as listening to jet engines spooling up!Becuase of the low speeds of the blower motors for these organ blowers you had to use those several stages to build up pressure.Now if the blower could run at the speed of your vacuum motor-the stages needed would be less.I guess a lot of the Chicago Organ was lost in a fire--Did the blower survive? The Blower itself is siginificant-was the largest single unit blower built by Spencer for pipe organ use.The Convention Hall comressors were from Kinetic Engineering-note the wood blower box in the picture.They made cylindrical metal blower enclosures later as Spencer did.
In the scenes of the video where the pipes were being packed-would have suggested that they use ACID FREE paper for wrapping the pipes instead of newspaper-newspaper has a few problems as a packing material-esp for long term storage The paper contains acids that can corrode metal parts-ie the organ pipes-and the ink can stain other items.

 

[tolivac]

And on the above picture-note the flexible rubber motor coupler to reduce shock to both the motor and blower when it would be started.The motor is started at reduced voltage and increased gradually to reduce stress on the air system.You hear that as these are spooled up.You see the blower--the motor has been removed.Guess these are being moved?Or are these blowers being sent to someone for rebuilding?The air pump indeed,has eight fan stages.Contrast that to where I work-the 100PSI air compressors in the building where I work have two piston stages.Have to check those each shift.