Ammonia smell in machine == mouse pee.

i

So I have a buyer coming to inspect the Hardinge UM I'm selling and
plug it in for the first time in months just to be sure everything's
working. This is minutes before he arrives - as an afterthought.
Sh******t.

I converted this mill to single phase long ago, so this is a capacitor
start motor. When it started there was a loud rattle coming from
underneath. At first I thought it was just that the motor was
bouncing and the belt wasn't tight, but the circuit breaker / heater
kicked out. I looked inside and didn't see anything. I turned the
motor and the spindle wasn't tight. I didn't smell anything at that
point. I reset the breaker and turned the motor on again. It started
and ran, but this time smoke collected inside the mill base, so I shut
it off. It had an ammoniacal smell, not like the usual burnt winding
or burnt electronics smell. The motor didn't feel hot, but I didn't
spend a lot of time feeling all over. I told the buyer about the
problem and ran it for maybe 5 seconds just to show that the motor
still ran and might be repairable. I knocked $100 off the price and
we were both satisfied. Since he put a deposit down, I'm not going to
mess with it since now it's really his machine, but I'm curious. Was
this a capacitor that was going bad? Is there anything else on a
motor that might smell like ammonia? The motor is probably vintage
50s or 60s, so it's not ancient. It has grease fittings and as we've
discussed here before, overgreasing can kill the bearings, but it
didn't seem to have siezed bearings. The spindle turned freely. It
just made an unusual vibrating noise and smoked the second time I ran
it.

RWL

GeoLane at PTD dot NET writes:

Is there anything else on a motor that might smell like ammonia?

Ammonia means nitrogen, which means animals or plants, not something
typically electrical. Usual suspect is el raton.

Ignoramus32252 wrote:

Ammonia smell in machine == mouse pee.

i

Yup. I had a Fanuc E-310 robot that was giving random limit errors. I eventually opened
it up and found sound deadener (we used that) and that aroma. Mice crawled up the vacuum
port (clean room robot not in a clean room) and set up home next to a nice warm servo
motor. They tried the limit switch wiring for taste and must not have liked them that
much.

Wes

On 2009-03-14, Wes wrote:
Ignoramus32252 wrote:

Ammonia smell in machine == mouse pee.


Yup. I had a Fanuc E-310 robot that was giving random limit errors. I eventually opened
it up and found sound deadener (we used that) and that aroma. Mice crawled up the vacuum
port (clean room robot not in a clean room) and set up home next to a nice warm servo
motor. They tried the limit switch wiring for taste and must not have liked them that
much.


You sure do not want them to like the taste of your wiring.

Mice set up home in my old generator once. Amazingly they did not
damage anything permanently once I cleaned out their nest. I placed
moth balls there and in the shed and since then, no problem. But it is
not something that you can do in a garage, due to ill health effects.

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On Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:33:55 -0500, Richard J Kinch
wrote:

GeoLane at PTD dot NET writes:

Is there anything else on a motor that might smell like ammonia?

Ammonia means nitrogen, which means animals or plants, not something
typically electrical. Usual suspect is el raton.

Darn. If it was, I hope I got the critter that's been chewing up
things in my drawers and leaving its droppings. The traps haven't
caught anything. That could explain why the smoke seemed to be coming
from the top of the mill base rather than from the motor. I thought
it had just accumulated there, but now I suspect it was coming in from
the external forward reverse / high low speed electrical switch box on
the right side this machine.

Thanks to all who replied. This newsgroup is an excellent source of
experience.

RWL

Or, possibly, do you have a dog that is treating the motor like a fire plug?