Omid, this is the email I received from Santos:
Dear Dr Leon,
We « could » make it technically, but we did not, for price and strategic reasons (very low demand).
Best regards
Mr. Nicolas FOUQUET
SANTOS - Technical and Development Manager - General Manager
Tél : +33 4 72 37 35 29 - Fax : +33 4 78 26 58 21
www.santos.fr
_________________________
What do you think?
I am looking into 2 solutions:
Modifying the US version
Making 1kitchen outlet compatible with the european electricity
Thanks for your help.
Joel Leon
Dear Leon, I just do not understand Mr. Fouquet's response, which is disobliging toward the assurance he gave me three months ago! I will need to contact him to make some clarifications. If needed, I will pass around a petition. I know many individuals, one of whom is a French citizen residing in Paris (it is not only us in the U.S.), who would consider purchasing the French-made Santos fork mixers under the condition that the RPM is reduced.
In regard to your first proposed solution, modification of the Santos motor is costly: over $4,000.00 dollars, according to two industry experts that I talked to. In addition, I have been told that to achieve the optimum performance, the modification needs to be done by a technician who understands the kind of motor "torque", "momentum", and resultant "turbulence" that is required for mixing and kneading dough. I was informed that mixing needs a different torque than kneading. As you can see, this issue seems to involve more than just an armature that rotates around its axis.
In regard to your second proposed solution, it will only reduce the fork speed from 84 RPM (at 60 hertz) to 70 RPM (at 50 hertz), which is not a substantial diminution in speed.
An electrical engineer, who used to teach electronics at Columbia University until he retired about two decades ago, kindly proposed to me to reduce the motor speed by designing a new circuit ("variable pulse circuit") that would use either a "Silicon Control Rectifier" (SCR) or, better yet, a "TRIAC", which would trigger or send each cycle or pulse to the motor at longer intervals. Another way of expressing this is that, the SCR or TRIAC would cyclically send one pulse, skip the next pulse, send another pulse, skip, and so on. Adjusting the frequency of the power input is certainly a way to slow the motor down. However, using a low frequency such as 30Hz would cut the speed in half but may also cause the motor to heat up excessively. The variable pulse circuit would pulse the motor at a lower than 60Hz rate. That is, the circuit would skip some of the 60Hz power cycles. As a simple example would be to just skip every other cycle to give you an effective 30Hz rate. This should slow the motor down to half speed, while the missing pulses would give the motor time to cool since no current would be applied during the skipped cycles.
At the theoretical level, this sounds like a feasible solution which, according to him, should not cost more than $30.00 dollars to implement. He has already given me the schematic for the circuit, but I have not had the time to find someone to implement it. If you know a competent expert who can do this, I would be glad to email you a copy of the schematic. I thank you for posting the email for everyone to see. Good night!
