Garbage Score: 2HP Treadmill Motor

[SteveHGraham]

I just fired up the grinder to see if I was imagining that it ran well, and also to see if I needed to shrink the drive pulley to get more useful torque out of it. Man, I love this thing. The other day I cut a big wrench in two and tossed one end in the trash. I just rescued it because I hate throwing out good junk. I put it on the grinder for 30 seconds, and it's gorgeous.

I suppose the grinder could be improved, but I love it. Everyone needs a 1x42.

Anyway, I appreciate the info, Chipmaker.

[liveaboard]

LOL, going OT, but that sounds so familiar. I took apart a Ford NP205 to get a large bearing 31 spline input for my "doubler" (stacked cases for compound low) intermediate. Anyway, I had a lot of otherwise "useless" big honking gears, shafts, shifter forks. They are all in a box of such things, along with the gear/shaft guts of a TH350 I broke the case in half on (I swear I'm going to whip something up with the planetary set some day! Just not sure what...). At this point, the stuff I've used from the bin I couldn't even tell you the original source, but it's been so useful, and the material used for those shafts is so VERY nice to turn. On a side note, if you need good material for smaller shafting cheap, gather up pull-off shocks from obvious sources (they have to pay to get rid of them). Cut the shafts off, and they make great 3/8" to 3/4" shafting sources, you just have to get under the hard chrome coating.

I'll keep that in mind; it's hard for me to get junk here. As a foreigner who doesn't speak the lingo, they add a premium at the junkyard. And they're nuts to start with. So I see good things, but can never get a price that works.
Here the gypsies collect all scrap metal. when they have a van full, they sell it. I actually took my collection to the scrap yard and got $25 for it.

Those small car gears are tiny; literally fit into the palm of your hand. It's amazing they can handle the torque.

I want to make a pto winch for my tractor... I'd need those big gears you have for that.

[SteveHGraham]

This whole magnet business is interesting. I am looking for ways to soup old magnets up, and I am recalling bits of what I learned when I was getting a B.S. (no jokes please) in physics.

I remember that you can magnetize a material by applying a strong magnetic field to it. There is a funny S-shaped graph, and there was a big B and a big H, and the idea was that when you ran a powerful field through something like iron, part of the field remained when the external field was removed.

So much for $15,000/year tuition.

So if that's right, all you need to pep up a motor magnet is a seriously strong field. I was thinking I could blow twelve bucks on a big Ebay rare earth magnet, but those things are annoying and dangerous. You can't turn them off. Then I thought, "Why not an electromagnet?"

Sure enough, Ebay sells very cheap electromagnets. Even without buying directly from China, you should be able to get something way stronger than the magnets in a treadmill motor. For that matter, maybe I could rig something up from scrap metal and some wire.

I could go the rare earth route and see what happens, but sooner or later I'll make a mistake and get pinned to a machine like a note on a refrigerator.

It can't be this simple. I could go to another forum and ask electronics nerds, but they can be pretty cranky.

Looks like I need to come up with 10000 Gauss.

[liveaboard]

I just remember learning the same thing at a college where my mother worked. I was 10 and I was just hanging around the physics lab...
I was shown a massive U shaped magnet, and told they used it to magnetize other magnets.
That was the extent of my academic career.

[SteveHGraham]

You saved a lot of money.

[liveaboard]

Yes, I actually dropped out at age 10.
Not joking, I really did.
If it weren't for my spell-checker, you'd all know that already.
Back before the internet came along, I bought lots of 'how to' books.
People will often show you how to do things if you ask, and / or offer to help.
My brother took the opposite path, and is now a bigshot at IBM. Still, I'm pretty much content with my choice. I have to think of the extra years of fun I had while he was working his backside off.

[SteveHGraham]

Well, you missed out on learning to use drugs, being told your religion is garbage, being brainwashed by pampered Marxists, and paying thousands of dollars to read books you can get for a fraction of a cent each on a phone app. Whatever good things you missed, you can surely recover using the Internet.

[SteveHGraham]

Here is the news regarding the motor. Based on info I got from Frank Ford and Harold, I am thinking I would like to turn it into a buffer I don't need.

I'll have to make a mandrel with 1" rod for a shaft. It turns out I have 1" steel rod. I don't know how I got it, but it's here. I'll need 2 pillow block bearings, and I'll have to figure out how to make a pedestal or whatever it will be called. Something to raise the shaft at least 6" above whatever it rests on. A real man would weld or machine something, but wood would be a lot faster.

Today I went to Miami's amazing electronics-nerd supermarket and bought parts for the circuit I'll need to make the MC-2100 run. I killed the trash-heap bargain by buying several things I felt sure I "needed," such as wire looping pliers, a steel "spudger" for disassembling phones and tablets, and a 10K pot which cost like five times what I should have paid.

I also blew for some Fluke "mini-hook test leads." These are the spring-loaded jobs that hold onto wires so you can operate the meter as well as the probes. I had some Chinese ones, but the plastic in critical areas crumbled, turning them into self-torture devices that did everything BUT hold onto wires.

I'm sure that spudger will come in handy.

[spro]

Those mini-hook test leads are near mandatory these days and Fluke is super quality.
Back to saved gears and transmissions... I have a load of automotive transmission shafts for some reason. Nicely cut gears. I bought them from a shed where another guy stored them for some reason too. More interesting is some transaxles from the Renault Le Car. These tiny things have really nice gears. Coupled to a final drive, would make a decent small tractor or more. Time has overrun some notions but I just can't throw them out.

[liveaboard]

Well, you missed out on learning to use drugs, being told your religion is garbage, being brainwashed by pampered Marxists, and paying thousands of dollars to read books you can get for a fraction of a cent each on a phone app. Whatever good things you missed, you can surely recover using the Internet.

But all of that was available... everyone I knew as a kid was using drugs and into weird religions.
We had the Marxists too ["Man, why don't you give me half your stuff? You're so materialistic."].
I was the weirdo misfit who wouldn't conform to the social norm, by refusing artificial intoxicants.
No phone apps in those days though. The whole internet thing only just started.

[SteveHGraham]

I guess you got most of the benefits of college after all.

[earlgo]

Steve: Was the buffer the thing you actually used the motor for?
I just got a similar 2HP unit with controller, etc and it is rated at 5200rpm and I don't have an immediate plan for it.
Any suggestions?
--earlgo