In message
,
" writes
On Nov 1, 8:40*am, "Bill Noble" wrote:

it's rare for a capacitor to go out in the first few years of opeation - but
if they charged you only $12, I'd say you live in an area where there are
honest shops who have not yet adopted the "rip off the customer" mantra
since a capacitor alone would cost around that much.

How true is that? I had a capacitor go out on a motor, and I didn't
diagnose it correctly. The large electric motor specialists
(actually, the only one in town) was $65 "bench fee" which could
include the installation of the new capacitor, and $35 for the
capacitor.

This was for a $99 compressor I bought as a promo. The motor shop
advised it would be easier just to buy a new one rather than to repair
it.

Honestly, I just don't know that much about electric motors outside of
changing brushes, replacing bearings, etc. When it gets to armatures,
commutators, etc., send me home. I can fix most of my tools that have
wear items, but the heart of a motor is a mystery. I am at their
mercy, and it ****es me off, since GOOD information on motor repair is
pretty scarce.

Robert


For me I would have gone with Bill's initial assessment, as that was
exactly the cause for my first lathe. I did the initial light tapping of
the motor body to see if it would free itself but I ended up opening up
the motor to release the mechanism. I did notice before I lost speed
that the motor body had run hotter than normally expected

One other possibility that had been suggested by the service engineers
that should be considered is that I had a variable speed drive, and what
sometimes happens is the grub screw holding the fixed side of the pulley
to the shaft can sometimes work loose and allow the pulley to slide
against the motor body with obvious consequences.

The inside of a motor can be daunting, but it just takes time, and
confidence. My second lathe needed to be rewired internally from Star to
Delta, took an hour for just a couple of wires to be relocated, but the
result was worth it, I can now run the lathe from almost nothing to
ludicrous speeds ( one day I will get around to measuring it - but the
guess is 6000+RPM, obviously I don't use it at those speeds). The one
thing I wont do is re-wind the armature

--
John