converting pto winch to electric

[uglystik01]

okay so ive got a thomas 3.6t pto winch that im looking at converting to electric what kinda specs for an electric motor would be acceptable for comp work. ie. hp, max rpm, amp draw, 12v/24v etc

[rockcrawler31]

okay so ive got a thomas 3.6t pto winch that im looking at converting to electric what kinda specs for an electric motor would be acceptable for comp work. ie. hp, max rpm, amp draw, 12v/24v etc

Ideally you would bolt an electric motor to the back of the input shaft somehow. I know that ATS (the distributors for thomas) bolt hydraulic motors. But to be honest the only thing that you would pick up from this arrangement is the braking that comes with a worm drive and the large capacity of the thomas drum. In return you would still have all the bad parts of an electric winch (duty cycle, HP limitations, batteries, controllers etc) as well as the bad parts of the PTO (the bronze worm and main wheel are the limitations to line pull power after the shear pins)

[ricky1970]

From memory, the electric versions have an extra (or differant) gearbox on the back of them compared to the PTO or hydraulic versions. PTO or hydraulic are direct drive to the worm i think. Adapted a (small) hydraulic motor to an electric Thomas winch 15 or so years ago for a guy and it was very slow due to this gearing.

[uglystik01]

the input into the winch and the pto shaft is connected together via a double chain coupling i was going to mount an electric motor above the input shaft and with a sprocket on the motor chain drive to the input shaft of the winch. this way i can alter gear ratios easily. note im only a second year apprentice so i cant afford to buy a winch that would be competitve that can run plasma so i was hoping to build one for cheaper
thanks Brendon

[uglystik01]

started to tear the winch down to see if its even worth trying so far so good needs a good lube but looks to be in good condition. will see if i can get some needle roller bearings to replace the bushes and the gear ratio in the winch is 50:1 (or close to) seeing as the warn high mount is 134:1 i should be able to run a reduction of 2:1 between motor and winch input. i should get similar results as compared to a warn high mount. i think ???. a couple of good things about this winch is its bloody heavy duty i can easily convert it to pneumatic free spool and the drums huge allowing me to run a lot of plasma. so far i cant see why it shouldnt work but im only a noob at this so if anyone wants to put any input in it would be greatly appreciated

[rockcrawler31]

I had thought of this a while back so you're not covering new ground. I too found that i would need a 2:1 reduction to effectively have the right torque/HP/drivespeed rates. The thing is that while you COULD make it work, the amount of money that you're likely to spend on research/development/mistakes/engineering/fabrication you could have just gone and bought a highmount and banged a 9HP motor on it on 24v that does the same thing

[uglystik01]

well what kind of dollars are you looking at for a high mount and said modifications. as for dollars spent on modifying this the only real outlay would be motor and rope as i can do all the fab work. on a side note how often do you see the drive gear fail. just want to get it completly sussed out and my options weighed before i can or go ahead with the idea.

[rockcrawler31]

Don't get me wrong i love PTO winches, but in their place.

If you can do the fab work and milling and gear broaching then go for it. But you're adding complexity to the system by adding gear/chain drives for a start. I was going to run the electric motor to a step down gear box commercially available then run the winch as a mid mount behind the cab. The main thing that stopped me was the cost of the gearbox and getting the shafts happy to run at 5000 rpm. But with a pair of 9HP motors on 24v it would have cranked.