Sounds for me it is your nozzles in the CF which is clogged. I experienced this myself several times. You might clean them inside with cottonpins also called "toptips", or pressurized air. It is important to clean the CF well before you start using it. And filtrate particles larger than say 300 micron. I have problems with black pepper in some of my oil....

Check to make sure the arrows are lined up on the rotor and don't screw the blue top on too tight. You may also be loosing pressure in your system somewhere. I just blew a rubber gasket on one of my elements. Always something to fix.

Except for 4 inches of extremely tought $0.65 an inch hose, my system is all black steel and brass.

My CF works. Built similar to SunWizard's design.
Had one falure of a brass nipple going into the CF. Will change over to steel.

I made a dummy mistake with the psi relief valve. It is not a regulator!. Pump output with the washing machine motor and custom pulley is only a little over the max required for the system.

Here is a broad over view.

Dana

CF_1_Forum.jpg (175 Kb, 181 downloads) OC 20 CF view 1

Here is a second photo.
Dana

CF_2_Forum.jpg (276 Kb, 138 downloads)

Paul and Jake.

My motor is the $30.00 Harbor Freight pump that many making Bio use but due to leaks and not being able to return the pump, I chopped off the pump end and mounted a pulley to the motor. 12mm shaft made it a little difficult to get a pulley centered. Clamped up the new pulley with a smaller shaft size in a vice and used a drill bit chucked in the drill press to center the pulley and make sure it was going to drill straight. Locked down the vice, swapped in a 12mm drill bit and away I went centered and all. Mounted it to the motor, hooked up a belt around my pump and bingo, it works. Just had to make sure the pump was going to turn the right direction to make the pump work.

The only thing I have noticed is that occassionally when I have some thick really bad oil in the pump, sometimes it does not want to start easily. Give it a turn then hit the switch again and away it goes. I have a picture somewhere of my setup and need to take some pictures of my new setup. Still working a few things out but the filter, pump and motor, water heating elements, fill nozzel w/ 35' of 3/4 hoze, suction hose, bypass hose and CF are portable on a two wheeled hand cart.

Pump_Pictures.jpg (92 Kb, 131 downloads)

make sure you have enough volume at 90 psi. I have a hydro pump that pump 250 gpm with no restriction. I have the oil going through a tee with a gauge on the cf side on the other side I have a 3/4 ball valve. I start the pump with the valve open. I close the valve until the gauge reads 90 and listen for the cf to start spooling up. I think I will get the next bigger cf and put the small cf on one of my big trucks

Here is the picture of the cart that has everything. The CF is mounted on some 1.5 inch bar stock. Extremely noisy until I mounted some foam between the bar stock and the barrel. Pretty quiet now but still not silent. The main reason for doing this was to be able to move the CF from one barrel to another easily. The rubber hose is some 3/8 inch high pressure fuel injection hose. I've seen 210 degree oil in the hose and am hoping I don't have a blow out. At least for me, I'm happy with it since I don't have the vibration from the CF trying to break off the little brass fitting which was initally the CF mount to the pipe.

The only thing I still need to do is mount the electrical switches. Hopefully this weekend.

Hope this helps explain or show what I have done.

Steve

1st_Design_Cart.JPG (62 Kb, 174 downloads)

quote:

Originally posted by Diesel Steve:
I have a hydro pump that pump 250 gpm with no restriction.

Thats 250x overkill since you only need 1gpm, or 2gpm for the OC-50. That will waste some power since you will need to bypass a huge amount of flow.

quote:

Originally posted by doawaywithme:
I got my mobile rig up and running today, but I'm having a little bit of trouble. I have the oil heated up and pumping through the centrifuge at approx 70-75 psi. The centrifuge will start up and run for say a few minutes and then will shut down on me. The pressure stays constant, but for some reason my centrifuge stops working. I have a variable speed motor, so sometimes if I slow the pressure down and then speed it back up it will start working again.

You should get to 90psi, it makes a big difference. It sounds like you are plugging your jets, did you run through any kind of screen before the CF barrel? And what temp is it at?

Diesel Steve,

Be careful with the ball valve. I bent the CF rotor pretty bad when an air pocket got in my pump and I wasn't paying enough attention to back off the flow when it hydrolocked the CF somewhere around 180 psi. At least this is what I saw on the gauge but it also reads 10 psi all the time now with no pressure. I'm thinking it might have hit around 250 psi on a 200 psi gauge. Luckly it did not totally destroy the rotor and I am still able to use it with no out of balance problems but if I do that again, I'll be buying a new rotor for around $60-80 bucks since if it bends again, it will be pretty much toast.

Steve

Sun,

I only having problems pluging the jets while I'm trying to get the rotor up to speed or if I pump a big air pocket into the CF which allows all the loose goo to float through the rotor to the ports. Once I'm underway at 90 psi, it is good to go for a long time without messing with it.

Steve

quote:

Originally posted by SteveESP52:
I'll be buying a new rotor for around $60-80 bucks since if it bends again, it will be pretty much toast.

You can add an oring and a flat washer on the top and a bent rotor works fine.

Put an inline screen like mine (on page 61). After I installed it, it stopped my entire clogging problem. I find that on start up the rotor is not up to speed, larger particles will be able to flow though the centrifuge and clog in the jets. Another reason if for contamination; every time you clean the rotor, or do anything in the barrel, you drop small particles in the oil, like sawdust, these are the ones that clog the jets. Actually I have 2 one for filling, and one inline for the reason above. If you just used the inline one you would run in to many problems. I have to clean my filling screen a few times if I get really dirty oil. Hydrogenated is the worst in winter, because the particles it doesn’t let the particles float to the bottom of the barrel.

Sun,

I'll be doing the washer and O-ring trick after I mess up again. Have you taken appart the base of the DC? There is a plug that says not to remove. Could this be a pressure relief valve that could protect the CF from extremely high pressures? I may take mine appart just to see unless someone else has already done so. If it is a high pressure relief, maybe the ports are not big enough to dump the volume of oil we are pumping and causing the rotor damage. Could it be that it opens above 100 psi but can only handle to 120 and what messes up the rotor is around 180+. I know, I should have purchased a pressure relief valve along with the 100's of other parts I already purchased to get this working. Would have been good money spent but it still feels good to get 800+ miles on under 20 gallons of Diesel in a 1 ton.

Steve

The base of the DC has a check valve in it that opens at 35 PSI. That's all that's in the bottom.

deiselcraft recommended me to remove the spring in the check valve... filtered over 1500 gallons trouble free exept that leak or 2 u always get

quote:

Originally posted by SunWizard:

quote:

Originally posted by Diesel Steve:
I have a hydro pump that pump 250 gpm with no restriction.

Thats 250x overkill since you only need 1gpm, or 2gpm for the OC-50. That will waste some power since you will need to bypass a huge amount of flow.

sorry I ment 250 gph, I got the pump and motor for free

quote:

Originally posted by SteveESP52:
Diesel Steve,

Be careful with the ball valve. I bent the CF rotor pretty bad when an air pocket got in my pump and I wasn't paying enough attention to back off the flow when it hydrolocked the CF somewhere around 180 psi. At least this is what I saw on the gauge but it also reads 10 psi all the time now with no pressure. I'm thinking it might have hit around 250 psi on a 200 psi gauge.

Steve

I moved the valve too much once and bent the cf by the big o-ring. I put it together and tapped it with a hammer and it quit leaking

It's easy to avoid things like that. I mounted a piece of metal on my valve, stopping the valve to be rotated to far in the wrong direction. The piece of metal is fastened to the schrew at the valv and bent uparwards 90o so it hit the handle.
I'm sure you might find a way.

If anyone is having trouble locating a pump to run the dieselcraft 20 CF, I purchased 3 pumps.

If you can't find one, contact me. I will part with one for what I paid for it. I am not a dealer or anything but figured I might need spares or one for a mobile unit. Would rather have one of the members have the deal.

The pump is an Oberdorfer N991R, new in the box. I believe this is the same one, or very close, to the same one the Sunwizard uses.

Judge