Yep, that's the housing for the start cap.

Bob Swinney
"PhysicsGenius" wrote in message
...
Well, I don't know a thing about motors. This one has a big cylindrical
thing mounted on top of it (parallel to the shaft). Is that a
capacitor? (I could post a picture if someone wants to see it.)

GTO69RA4 wrote:
Single phase just means is runs on normal household current, nothing
more. A
split phase motor doesn't have any capacitors on it, a cap-start has
one, a cap
start/run motor has two.

Split phase motors are actually the weakest and slowest of the three.
Less
starting torque than the other two. I have no clue why Gingery would
recommend
one, other than for cost reasons. Maybe the design isn't strong enough
for the
fast start a cap start motor would have. You can use any kind of motor
you want
on a lathe.

GTO(John)


I found a motor at the dump. It works great and appears to even have
been part of a woodshop at one point (covered with sawdust). What I'm
not sure of is if it fits the requirements Gingery lays down.

The frame is a little larger than NEMA 48, but that's not a big deal.
Gingery also says it should be "split phase", which from my research
seems to mean that it has an extra circuit in when it spins up to give
it extra torque for a fast (or just strong?) start. The plate on this
one has a box labeled "Phase" and in the box is the value "1". So
that's a single-phase motor then? If so, does that rule this one out,
even considering it's a 1/2 HP instead of the 1/4 Gingery lists as
minimum?

If that "Phase" box is unrelated to the split-phasedness, how can I tell
if this is a split-phase?