Getting Gas

[ZooCity]

So I've bumped into a potential road block on installing our TexAir electric monster in our new space.  The beast needs 100a 3ph (we are only going to run 2 IR panels so maybe 80 or so amps) and that's literally all we have available there.  Worse, it's a shared panel with a woodworking shop next door and they may occasionally be running a saw on the same service.  Obviously, I pushed the property owner to get us a fresh service and made a generous offer to help with that as well as take care of fresh wiring from the new panel/meter, we'll see if it works out.  Sharing panels isn't safe or smart, we all know that.  But moving along...

I had to nix a quartz flash w. stand and sensor since they rate theirs at about 49a (20x20 I think) from our order with Anatol this week and that just plain sucks. I want to throw myself a hissy fit about it in fact.  Thinking about selling off the TexAir and getting gas to free up panel space.  We have our own metered gas service for a ceiling hung shop heater and that's about all I know.  One of the dryers I'm seriously interested in is a precision and I don't have a damn clue where to find info on it's gas and 3ph needs. I browsed M&Rs site since it's so inclusive with the specifics and I know their all pretty similar in function but still am pretty damn lost so...

Can anyone give me a ballpark about what we need to have going on gas wise to do an install of a dryer?  We'd be running a max 60" belt up to 12' chamber, no IR bump panels, just straight gas (unless we get that updgrade). 

[ebscreen]

Run the TexAir with no electric panels. Unless you are CRANKING them out you don't need it.
Belt and blowers probably 20 amps or so, maybe less.

Shared panel is BS though. Not even sure that could be legal.

The big big gas dryers are about 500K btu. 1.5-2" pipe. The smaller 200-300K btu dryers (like your TexAir)
are typically fine on .75"-1" pipe. But if you're doing a new install go as big as the pipe you're coming off of.

[ZooCity]

Thanks man.  Our texair is EEE which stands for Electric-Electric-Electric and means our forced air section in the middle of the panels is also electric, not gas.  It also has two panels on the intake and one on the outtake so we can run two instead of three IR panels (one's busted anyhow) to get the amp draw down. 

[ebscreen]

Oh snaps, missed that part. Go gas, you won't go back.


I have two panels that will fit that dryer if need be. I don't want 'em.

[ZooCity]

Oh snaps, missed that part. Go gas, you won't go back.


I have two panels that will fit that dryer if need be. I don't want 'em.

No kidding.  Might take you up on that, if we can run that 3rd panel that is...haha.  I bet ours is just a wiring thing but who knows. 

I'm considering putting a small monster gas dryer in the shop now and just getting it over with.  It seems kinda absurd to be feeding a 60" belt 20' dryer with a couple of manual presses but it least we won't need another one ever.  And it will cure the living crap out of our ink. 

[244]

The Tex-Air is going to cost you monthly in electricity what a lease payment on a new dryer would be with a lot more headaches. I used to work for American when they were built and they have lots of issues. A new 60" dryer from M&R uses around 150,000 btu per hour which in most areas in the country relates to about $8.00 per day running cost and dryer capacity on plastisol is 2,000 per hour and waterbase is 1,500 per hour roughly.. Gas pressure on natural gas needed is 8" water column and pipe size is 1 3/4.  The Tex-Air is going to cost 18-20 per day and on plastisol it will do about 900 per hr and waterbase is pretty much a waste of time through it. Count on about 3-400 max. Just a fyi.

[mk162]

I looked at the M&R Sprint and the Interchange MD-8, we chose the interchange.

The one we got was around $20K with 12' of heat, 48" belt, and an extra 4 feet of infeed.  I am dropping the infeed eventually and going with an extra section of heat.  It requires 7" water column and uses about 180,000 BTU's.

Kick the Tex-Air to the curb.  I opened up 120A of sweet, sweet 3 phase power by ditching ours.  Now I have space for a servo press and some quartz units.

[alan802]

Speaking of Texairs, ours was down all day long, got it running at 4:30!  One of the worst days I've had in this industry.  My big ass crawled around inside the entire dryer trying to find the problem, even got inside the burner assembly and checked the spark plug and burner rod.  Troubleshooted literally everything then found a wire that had been smashed through it's ceramic port and was dangling up against metal on the inside of one of the dumaflotchies that is on this ungodly overwired son of a bitch.  Does it really require 16 miles of electrical wire to wire one of these EFFER's up?  You take the cover off of it and you think that it should be the main wiring behind the instrument panel of an aircraft carrier, ridiculous.  Not to mention this is one of the busiest weeks we've ever had as a screen print business.  I'm pissed, a 10 hour day and we managed to get one 144 piece job done, now we've got at least 2 days of 12 hours a piece looking us in the face.

Oh yeah, ditch the Texair, it costs us hundreds upon hundreds in electricity a month.

[ZooCity]

OK, you all have almost convinced me to ditch the TexAir, despite the fact that I already have it here.  Keep in mind this thing was practically free and all I have to do is fork it on a truck and move it over a neighborhood and plug the bastard in.  Even if it rapes us on the electric bill for a year it could still be more cost effective than purchasing, shipping and installing a gas one to replace it so I'm holding onto the thought. 

I'm looking at a used Precision right now - appx. 125,000 btu, 208/230 V ; 3 phase ; 10-12A without IR Panel; 35-40A with IR panels - 60" belt 5-10-5

I compared to current M&R sprints to get a ballpark and am working out an appointment with the utility co. to see if we have enough gas running into the space.   This dryer costs it's owner about $200/month to run at comparable gas rates to ours in MT.  I wonder could that TexAir all-electric really be higher?

A new dryer would be awesome but we just dropped a lot of cash this year and I'd rather not tack another loan payment onto there so used really seems the way to go.

That's cool you worked @ American back in the day Rich.  I'm actually a really big fan of a lot of their equip. and was expecting the dryer, despite it's massive consumption of juice to be reliable like the rest.  Maybe you could fill me in a little more officially on Precision- I know M&R purchased them awhile back so does M&R have any manuals/schematics on file for their models or support them?  I've heard that an M&R dryer tech can work on the Precisions easily.   I'm also presuming that a skilled hvac tech could tune up a screen printing dryer, or at least I hope, we're pretty far from tech service out here I think.

[ZooCity]

Damn Alan, that is rough. 

[californiadreamin]

Depending on the length of you pipe run a 1" pipe will supply 550,000 btu's easy. A 1 1/4' pipe will supply 750,000 btu's easy. Natural gas or propane? Natural gas is sold by the cubic foot, with 1,000cf = 1,000,000 btu(one therm)
National average of natural gas per therm now is approx $8.37 plus gratuities. Divide these cost by ave hourly consumption of said dryer. If it is propane, then it is sold by the gal. which is equal to 91,500 btu plus or minus per gal.
Averag cost on propane is now about 3.35 per gal.  Electricity is sold by the (kwh) which equals 3,413 bth. It is good to know YOUR local cost on all the above. These cost may vary " bigtime" from location to location.
Good Luck
winston

[ZooCity]

Thanks Winston, that's some info I was trying to get ahold of on the interwebs today.  The kw to btu comparison is interesting.  I know that they do some weird things regarding billing when running 3ph too. 

I did a state-to-state comparison and we're at about the same rates as where the dryer's coming in from and we're slower in production to boot so we'll be running it cooler with a longer dwell time.  We're on natural gas.  It seems LP is a lot cheaper, interesting. 

This is encouraging as, besides this potential gas dryer, we only have a regular old shop heater in the space pulling gas.  Fingers crossed we have 1" pipe.