In article ,
S Viemeister writes:
Phil wrote:

Hi - I have a US 70's food blender I used to use when I lived in the
US. I now live back in the UK and want to use it here.

I assume I can't plug this in here - the info on the base shows :

Volts = 115v
Freq = 25-60 cycles
Amps = 5.2
Watt = 575

I'm no expert but strikes me a transformer for this would be pretty big
so ideally I need to get the motor replaced for a UK spec one - if
that's possible.

Any ideas how / who could do this. ?

I know everyone will say buy a Uk blender but this thing is awesome.

I have a US food processor which I use with one of those travel
converters and a plug adapter. It's been working away quite happily,
since 1998.
I use the same setup with my US sewing machine.

When I was young in the 1960's, the family lived in the US.
My parents came back to the UK with a number of US kitchen
appliances, although they were all heating appliances, not
motor ones. For years, they were used on a large variac
auto-transformer, using the (fixed) centre tap to derive 120V.

Around 10 years ago, I built a circuit to chop the middle
out of each half mains cycle to produce 120V RMS for the
heating elements. I chopped the middle out in order to
minimise the peak voltage in the heating elements, which
were only designed for 120V AC. Even so, the peak is
slightly higher than they were designed for, but less so
than would be the case using a phase control dimmer circuit.
The circuit uses a pair of power MOSFETs to switch the
mains, and a fast acting fuse to limit damage if one of
the MOSFETs was to short and deliver full 240V to the 120V
heating elements (which has never happened).

I suspect such a design would also work with universal
motors, but it would probably be necessary to include much
more protection for the MOSFETs than I did for resistive
loads.

--
Andrew Gabriel