On 02/13/2011 01:03 PM, Karl Townsend wrote:
The electric spout turner on my snowblower is blowing fuses...again.

I'm thinking of moving way on up in motor power and using heavy wire
from the battery and a reversing relay
http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.as...tname=electric

http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.as...tem=11-3169-12

I can see this will slam the spout around - too fast. Also got way
more torque than needed. OK for you EE types, what's an inexpensive
way to slow it down. I've wore myself out looking for 10 rpm high
torque motors - maybe somebody else knows where to look.

Karl

I am not familiar with the way that the motor drives the spout on a snow
blower, but I am picturing a roller chain sprocket or a ring gear around
the outside of the spout. Could you do the speed reduction mechanically
by changing the driving sprocket or gear size? If that is not possible,
I can't think of a good cheap way to do it that would not reduce the
torque so much to make it useless. A servo approach seems the most
obvious but fails the cheap test. You might try putting something in
series with the motor like an electric stove element or water heater
element, but anything that heats has the undesired feature of increasing
in resistance as the current requirement increases.

Mechanical limit switches on the spout and living with the fastest spout
in town might be the cheapest option. The limit switches should control
a relay in order to keep them a manageable (and cheap) size.


BobH from sunny Tucson