Why For Centrifugal Clutches, Size Matters

Size matters when you’re designing and manufacturing centrifugal clutches! We know this from our experience working with our customers who have come to use from many different industries throughout the years. If you’re not already familiar with BLM Automatic Clutch, we’re a family owned company, which designs and manufactures centrifugal clutches.

Whenever we’re designing and manufacturing centrifugal clutches for our customers, we rely on our customers to provide us with accurate information and specifications. We work closely with each customer to learn about any special or unique requirements for the clutches. Fully understanding their operations is critical in determining the right size centrifugal clutch within each specific application.

When it comes to the speed and the horsepower RPM, this information also must be accurate. If the information about the speed and horsepower is incorrect, the clutch may only partially engage but will still try to drive a full load on partial engagement resulting in clutch failure. Another possible scenario is that the running speeds are inaccurate and the clutch blows up.

Determining how many belts on a pulley application and the number of horsepower transmitted by each belt is necessary. Sometimes horsepower transmitted by manufacturer supplied equipment is insufficient to maximize the engine capacity, this results in an oversell of the size of the engine. The solution is to have more belts or a smaller engine.

Ultimately, the correct clutch size is critical for the overall performance and the longevity of a centrifugal clutch. Also having the correct clutch size can prevent damage or malfunction and costly downtime. To prevent any of these scenarios from happening we encourage our customers to share with us all accurate information and run each clutch within its intended application parameters.

We’d be happy to tell you more about why it’s so critical for manufacturers of centrifugal clutched to get accurate specifications and information from the end users of the centrifugal clutches. Reach out to us at any time with any questions you may have.