Universal Massport pump help

[MillbrookMaple]

We just got our vac system up and running today. We have a Universal Massport pump around 80cfms. It has a oil reclaimer hooked to it. We have been running it at arount 17hg for 8 hours and everything seems to be great. I have questions about how much oil to flow to the pump and also how high I can safely push it. It seems that if I set the oil flow too high it smokes a lot. I was told I could top it out at 22hg but not knowing what to watch out for I wanted to err on the side of caution. If anyone has some experience with this pump and have any advice I would greatly appreciate it. I want to maximize my equipment but I also want it to last.

[oneoldsap]

If you have a water source that will allow you to run a full gravity stream of water onto your pump housing ( 5/16" Tubing ) you can cool the pump and pull 22-23" of vac 24/7 . A word of caution though , don't run water onto a hot pump , it will stop dead ! Start the pump and the water at the same time . Those old dairy pumps just don't have the cooling capacity for constant use or high vacuum , without the water as a coolant . Give it a try , you'll boost your production as much as 20% . You can thank me later ! LOL

[KillerBee]

Hi folks,

I just installed the same kind of set-up than Millbrook... My pump is a Universal Masport M5 with a reclaimer and oil drippers. It is driven by a 13 hp Honda Engine.

We were on gravity for the last 7 years and we just bought that pump this year! :)

We runned it for the first time today... we had it running at around 18 hg. As we were gravity before, we know that we have lots of leaks in our tubing systems, so we have to go over all our system to repair these leaks.

Now, I have basically the same questions as Millbrook...

How much oil do I need to flow to the pump? 1 drop per seconds? Less or more?

How much heat can the pump handle? I`ve seen that the M5 should run at 1100 RPM, so this is what we tried to run it (We used a tacho on the engine and we calculate the pump RPM with the pulley ratio). However, the pump generate lots of heat! It doesn`t smoke but you can`t touch it! After about 1 hour of function, I put a little bit of snow on the top of the casing, it melted it and it started to boil!

I see that everyone says to keep the pump as cool as possible.

Do you think we will damage the pump with this heat?

If I find a way to keep it cooler (with a box fan, or something) will it have a better performance (higher vaccum)?

Anyway, I would also like, as Millbrook, to get as much info on this pump from anyone who is used to them!

Thanks!

Northern New Brunswick, Canada
Started with 200 cans in 1992,
Converted to gravity tubing in 2005. 750 taps
Bought a vac in 2012, 1000 taps.
Dad and his two sons.