Homemade controls

[Fireman61341]

Thought this might interest a few of you. These are the controls for our low toned model 7:

I don't know a whole lot about siren controls, but I believe in this pic the timer is on the right with the brass 220v contacts in the center, and the 110v motor that turns it all is on the left, it was originally in a sewing machine.


I was told that the siren was first installed in 1939, this is it's 4th location.
http://i383.photobucket.com/albums/oo27 ... 0_0040.jpg
I don't know if the controls are as old as the siren, but they look pretty close. One of the firemen many years ago made them out of used parts he had laying around. When the siren was moved to it's latest location behind the station in 1996 there was talk of getting some modern controls for it, but they decided "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" so the old controls moved with it. The dispatchers in the police station next door activate it with a land line. It normally sounds 5 cycles of attack for fires, but it can also run alert continuously for tornadoes. Are there many sirens out there run by controls like this?

P.S. Sorry about the huge pictures, it's a miracle I can even post them, much less shrink them.

[Daniel]

That looks like an old Sterling timer. I doubt you'll find many of those still in use. I'd love to see a clip of it in operation.

[fedsigtbolt]

Interesting. I love the "If it ain't broke, dont fix it" motto.

[Fireman61341]

Now that I'm looking at it again, the cams and contacts in the center aren't 220v, they're low voltage. The high voltage is next to the disconnect box, I know there is a contact there that you can close to manually growl it. It could be a Sterling timer, I really don't know, but the former chief that's been on the dept 40 years says the whole thing was built from scratch. I'd love to make a video of it but I'm stuck in the 90s with my VHS camera. It's pretty neat to watch it operate and kinda noisy too, lots of clicks and humming. If anyone wanted to come here and make a video, I'm sure I could get them in on a Mon night when it's tested.

[Franz?]

Well, what you have yourself there is a genuine Sterling Fire Alarm siren controller, probably manufactured on South Plymouth Ave in Rochester NY.

The electric motor driving it is not original and the homemade pully damn well ain't original. Other than that, you have one damn fine antique that will still be functional 50 years from now if not longer.

You just might want to look into replacing the plywood pulley and getting a little tighter belt on it though.

[Fireman61341]

That's good to know. I thought the timer part looked awfully complicated to be made from scratch. I have to chuckle every time I see that goofy pulley, it's actually held to the other pulley with bailing wire! I think the belt is so loose because the motor is bolted down solid and there's no way to tension it, it doesn't appear like it's slipping though. I'm assuming the smaller pulley was put on there to speed up the cycles a bit. I could try to talk them into to doing something with the pulley set up, but I'd probably run into the "ain't broke don't fix it" mentality again, it's ran like that for years.

[Franz?]

You could always tell them the man who wrote the book on Sterlings said they should do it because it might fail as it is now.

Or you could go with the thing being a Museum Piece and deserving to be as close to original as possible.

Or, you could tell them the TimeO Matics that came along later to replace that are no longer available so they need to preserve what can't be replaced.

[Fireman61341]

I'll have to see if I can persuade them to do something with it. Maybe if they changed the pulley on the motor, the original pulley on the timer could be used. I doubt that they really know what they have, I sure didn't. Thanks

[Federal Signal fan]

Very nice controls. It appears (From my understanding and perspective) that your using toggle switches for siren modes instead of the AR Timer series' standard push-button activation/deactivation controls. Likely because it was probably easier to work with and to wire? (Going on plausible understanding of partly working with wires.) Since a siren obviously runs on massive amounts of electricity, what gauge wires are you using? Obviously (Again, from my partly limited understanding) you would have had to use heavy duty or bigger wires? Again, I don't have much information on wires and electrical topics. So I like to ask as to gain the said information. Over all, the motor and electrical work looks neat, legal, and above all; spectacular!

Joshua

[Fireman61341]

Thanks. Not really sure on the wiring, you can see the 220v wiring in the first picture to the right of the disconnect box, I think this is 3 phase. I'm pretty sure the the timer itself is low voltage, you can see on the top right of the first picture where it says "48volt". As far as the switches, up until about 7 years ago we had 1 dispatcher that lived in an apartment above city hall. When the switches were up there there were 3 momentary toggles, 1 for Fire, 1 for EMS (just 1 up and down cycle, we don't use this anymore), and 1 for Tornado that would run it continuously until it was pushed again. I haven't seen what controls it now since we went to full time shift dispatchers and everything was moved downstairs to the police station. Someone told me they thought there was an icon on the computer they clicked on to activate the siren, but I'm not sure if that's really possible with old controls like this. Just in case anyone is wondering, these aren't out in the open, they have a open top box around them.