Denis G. wrote:

Nice work and good ideas! Did you need anything special to cut the
MOTs in half? I haven't tried it, but I thought that they were high
silicon steel metal and quite hard.

The laminations are indeed hard, but they still yield to a grinding wheel.

However, it is not the laminations which you need to grind through, it is
the weldment (likely MIG) which connects the "E" part to the "I" part. Here
are pictures of a little one that has been opened up:

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/3417/mot01.jpg
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/6509/mot2k.jpg

In the first picture you can see the seperate "E" and "I" laminations. The
red arrows show the location of the welds which were placed at the factory
to hold the "E" to the "I". In the second picture, you can see where the
welds were removed using an angle grinder.

Jon