Winkler L.P.

BDR529

Anyone have a set of manuals for a LA-3?

STEVEusaPA

You're going to need a Delorean...maybe @EBEBRATT-Ed or @Steamhead might have one.

EBEBRATT-Ed

Not I. I think you will have a hard time finding that. Burkhardt's book "domestic & commercial oil burners" has some info on those burners but not much.

Steamhead

I remember these burners from years ago. They were more efficient than standard burners of their time, as they did a much better job of mixing oil and air. However, they were much more expensive to produce, and the various manufacturers- Winkler, Williams and General Electric were the three biggest- never standardized anything to make servicing easier. This last is also a huge problem with mod-con boilers today.

The advent of Shellhead and then Flame-Retention burners killed the low-pressure burner market, since they were pretty much as efficient and cost a lot less. I sometimes wonder how much more efficient a Winkler would be if it were fitted with a flame-retention head.

I did find a Google Book that features an article on these units:

http://books.google.com/books?id=2yUDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA257&dq=popular science 1959 stewart-warner&pg=PA132#v=onepage&q=popular science 1959 stewart-warner&f=false

EBEBRATT-Ed

Never worked on a low-pressure residential burner or even saw one as as far as I can recollect.

I did work on plenty of commercial/industrial low pressure air atomizing burners, Iron Fireman, Power Flame, Webster, Industrial Combustion, Ray, Johnson & Gordon Piatt all made them.

Iron Fireman & Gordon Piatt are long gone but the others are still around. Of course Clever Brooks uses them extensively. And there are are others

The biggest one I worked on was 120gallons/hour but most of the ones I saw were in the 30-75gph range. Quite common in schools back in the day when burning heavy oil was popular because it was cheap. By the 80s pollution laws became stricter and all the smaller stuff under 100gph mostly went over to 2 oil or gas

The low pressure would burn #2, 4 or 6 oil which is basically roofing tar. You had to get #6 close to 200F or higher to burn properly, #2 would burn cold as would #4 although 4 burned better at 120 or so

BDR529

That is a fantastic article. Had LA-3 in the office for 20+ years, it is complete. chains dampner doors,springs, 2-nozzles...
Always wanted to fire it but to find a manual to know what i'm looking at insted a speculating would be nice. Thanks for the info.

Steamhead

Pictures?

BDR529

retiredguy

I, like @EBEBRATT-Ed worked on the burners he mentioned and on about the same size. I did however work on one low pressure burner. It worked very well and burner waste oil. If it is more information you are seeking you can do a search for "waste oil burners". I found 3 names you could contact for more information. They are: Clean Energy, Energy logic and clean burn LLC. The one I worked on was similar to Clean Burn.

BDR529

Thanks for the response, This is not a air-atomizer like a waste oil burner, this is a different animal. I do waste oil as well, have a Firelake running in a Buderus and that is a topic in itself.

The LP has mixes the oil and air so the fuel has to get frothy from what I can tell and before the nozzle. No solenoids or heaters. Air cavity and percolator Something else is going on that I'm missing.

If it is static for a time the dissolved air in the fuel comes out of solution and rise back up into the air chamber.?? Air comes out of solution and makes it soot? I don't know.
What are the pressures on the air and oil anyway? Figure1-2 PSI? slightly higher on the air.

Must have a massive after drip? Flame control on shutdown if any (little
funnel on air tube for the drips)? Check valves in nozzles?
A good long run time between heat calls?

Have no idea how it burns heavier fuels. I see so much of the fuel delivery to the nozzles cooling off to be able to flow at those low pressures. Electric heater kit?

Either way I find it brilliant. So many years after the fact it is still interesting.

Zman

@Tim McElwain ?

EBEBRATT-Ed

The air atomizers I worked on had 1 oil line and one air line to the nozzle. The air mixed with the oil inside the nozzle. This was the "primary air" only the secondary air is supplied by the fan driven by the burner motor like a regular burner.

oil pressure and air pressure at the nozzle were about the same. You could also convert an air atomizer to use steam with the right equipment

BDR529

An air-atomizer converted to run on steam? Do tell.. that is sorcery!

mattmia2

BDR529 said:

The LP has mixes the oil and air so the fuel has to get frothy from what I can tell and before the nozzle. No solenoids or heaters. Air cavity and percolator Something else is going on that I'm missing.

If it is static for a time the dissolved air in the fuel comes out of solution and rise back up into the air chamber.?? Air comes out of solution and makes it soot? I don't know.
What are the pressures on the air and oil anyway? Figure1-2 PSI? slightly higher on the air.

Must have a massive after drip? Flame control on shutdown if any (little
funnel on air tube for the drips)? Check valves in nozzles?
A good long run time between heat calls?

Looking at the popular mechanics diagram it looks like there is a mechanical device driven off the motor that areates the oil and it doesn't feed more oil until the pressure from the blower opens the oil feed so maybe it is aranged so the oil runs back in to that device on shutdown and that device reareates the oil collected in it on startup.

OuterCapeOilguy

Fascinating. I've been interested in finding out more about these burners for years. On Ebay, one can find period advertising posters for just about anything; during a Google search for Williams Oil-O-Matic, I came across posters for these burners, which first appeared ca. 1924; early ads touted their ability to burn light and heavy fuel oils, and-pertinent to today's increasing emphasis on renewable resources-vegetable oil!. (Within a couple of years, ads dropped any mention of vegetable oils; I'm guessing the influence of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil may have played a part...) With their much larger nozzle opening and the fact that on shutdown the oil supply stops and allows the remaining air from the pump to clear the nozzle, coking would not be a problem. The venerable Audel's Oil Burner Guide (I have a 1948 edition) has a couple of pages on the Williams model Fifty-Ten burner, and indicates that it had a 3450 RPM motor. I've been doing periodic Internet searches hoping to find one on which to do some experimenting, to see if it would be adaptable to a modern retention-head burner chassis. If anyone on here knows of one, I'm all ears....

BDR529

I get some time i think a youtube video is needed.