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Old tractor design info?

I

IaLeo

Well-known Member
When looking at steam engines and old tractors, one sees many sizes of belt pulley PTOs. I read somewhere the size of those pulleys was determined by a standard of 3000 feet per minute belt speeds.Any truth to that? Leo
 
If there was a standard I do not see it. I have a list of pulley sizes and RPMs for many tractors published in 1948. Silver King runs at
6000 feet per minute. John Deere B runs at 4700 feet per minute. Farmall 20 runs at 4700 feet per minute. Case VA runs at 3232 feet per
minute.
 

You also need to consider the diameter of the pulley on the threshing machine. I'm sure the threshing machine was designed to function efficiently at a certain RPM and sizes of pulleys were chosen to deliver that certain RPM.
 
Rusty has a good point. There are several factors involved transmitting enough horsepower for the job.
1. flexibility of the belt in that day and age. I think most were multi-ply cotton with rubber-like coating which had limits to their bending around small diameter pulleys.
2. RPMs of shafts have an effect on the centrifugal forces that discourage the belt from hugging the pulley for full grip.

If there were no standard belt speeds the operators could overspeed or underspeed the machine depending on the engine they had not matching what the machine designers had planned for.

I find it interesting that a 200 rpm steam engine could be used as well as a 700-1400 rpm gasoline engines.
Just had to size the diameter of the pulley to be useful, I guess. Leo
 
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