A strange Columbia speed control

[FloridaClay]

I have a little Columbia Eclipse table model disc machine whose speed control works backward. That it, moving the speed lever to the right toward S makes it go faster and moving it to the left toward F makes it go slower. Not a big deal, as it works, but curious. Just wondering if any of you have encountered similar behavior with a Columbia.

Clay

[De Soto Frank]

A friend is dealing with governor issues with a "new" Eclipse he picked-up a few weeks ago.

His situation is that moving the speed control lever through its range of motion really doesn't affect the speed at all.

He sent me some pics of the mechanism:

[De Soto Frank]

It appears to me that my friend's machine was re-assembled with the speed control shaft installed with the "flat" positioned approximately 180* "out of clock"; the "flat" should bear against the bellcrank lever that forces the governor pads against the spinning disc.

With the pointer set at "Fast", the flat should be resting flat-against the bellcrank. As the lever is moved towards "Slow", the edge of the flat begins to bear against the bellcrank, acting like an eccentric cam, and forcing the pads towards the governor disc.


Clay, if your machine is constucted like the one in the photos, it sounds to me like your speed control pointer is set so that the "wrong" edge of the flat is bearing against the bellcfrank causing it to operate "backwards".

As I understand it, the lever is attached to the control shaft with a collar & set-screw, so perhaps if you loosen the set-screw and reposition the shaft and pointer so the othe edge of the "flat" bears on the bellcrank, things should work as intended.

[Norfolkguy]

I have a little Columbia Eclipse table model disc machine whose speed control works backward. That it, moving the speed lever to the right toward S makes it go faster and moving it to the left toward F makes it go slower. Not a big deal, as it works, but curious. Just wondering if any of you have encountered similar behavior with a Columbia.

C;au

My Columbia C-2 does the same thing. I haven't tried to adjust it as the speed control also turns it on and off. Otherwise it works great.

[De Soto Frank]

Florida Clay and Norfolkguy,


I opened-up my Columbia "Favorite" (?) today, and took some pics of the speed controls and positions for "SLOW" and "FAST".

My machine is all original, and un-tinkered-with, and it seems to behave the way it is supposed to. The only problem I'm having is that the governor weights are flaking-off, so the machine runs faster than it should.

Take a look at these photos, and see if they help you to properly set-up the controls on your machines... if the control shaft is set with the wrong edge against the governor bell-crank, relative to the pointer position, the control will function "backwards".

[FloridaClay]

Thanks all. Will open it up and examine things in light of the pictures and advice.

Clay

[FloridaClay]

Frank, you were right on target. Problem solved.

The adjustment (which is fairly easy to do) had been set so that the flat spot was several degrees off from being parallel to the edge of the bell-crank lever at the fast setting, and off in such a way that moving the speed control toward slow actually brought the flat into position for fast!

Getting it parallel at the fast setting solved the issue of having it go slower when the control lever is moved toward slow. Perhaps due to wear, though, some additional tweaking was required as the slowest setting produced a speed of about 83 or so rpm. This required that at fast the flat be set slightly beyond the parallel position (clockwise viewed from the motor side) in order to be able to achieve 78 rpm.

Many thanks!

Clay