# need help with recycling a motor.



## kd0afk (Feb 4, 2013)

Someone was throwing away a washing machine and i scavenged it. Problem is i don't know what wire is what and im confused. What ever happened to a motor having two or three wires?
Anyway, here is a photo. I just want to know which wires power it.


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## TorontoBuilder (Feb 4, 2013)

Its a multi-speed motor... laundry equipment comes with many different cycle speeds.. I'd go back and get the wiring diagram from the appliance to make it easy to figure out.

Otherwise you will have to use the empirical test method and risk shorting something, or websearch for data on your motor... which may be difficult. I think that is from a frigidaire washer? try their websites


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## kd0afk (Feb 4, 2013)

Ok, I found the number of the motor and looked it up. Here it is. The wires on the motor pretty much line up with what the photo says they should be; The two red wires that go from some gizmo on the end of the motor are supposed to be a tachogenerator and I can see that being what it is. The blue and white wires that connect to the brushes are labeled armature winding. There is a sensor near the motor winding and has two purple leads that are labeled motor thermal protector
and the wires coming from inside the motor are labeled stator winding tapped field and stator winding full field. I know I wouldn't run power to the tach or the thermal protector how would I wire up the rest of it? It this a reversable motor ya thind?


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## kd0afk (Feb 5, 2013)

I watched a couple of videos (took me a while to weed through all of the washing machine maintenance videos but I got further.
The wiring I have so far is + goes to one of the brushes, negative goes to one of the field coils, green goes to ground the motor case and you are supposed to connect one of the other field coils to the other brush. My question is, what do I do with the other field coil wire? I put my Smith tach on it on the 10000 rpm range and it pegged it quick. I just wonder what kind of power the thing has. The label might as well be written in Klingon, the only thing on it I understand is 120v. I don't even see an amperage rating on it.


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## chipenter (Feb 5, 2013)

Did you keep the speed controller if so you can replace the fixed resistor with a varible one , be careful some of the heat sinks can be live . As each machine is different someone may have posted a how to if you are lucky .


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## kd0afk (Feb 5, 2013)

I didn't take the controller. I know very little about motors but I think its reversible though from the schematic. It has little or no vibration and I think other would make a great sharpener. 
Question; are grinding stones reversible? I could mount a plate on the shaft that would accept grinding cups in effect making half of a baldor grinder/sharpener and have the table extend across the whole cup and reverse the motor when I want to grind like on the other end of a grinder with two wheels.


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## RonGinger (Feb 5, 2013)

I just got the motor out of a front loading washer. It is a 3 phase, 16,000 rpm motor. The controller is a VFD, although it seems to have several fixed speeds. That is not a mistake on the rpm- the motor drove the drum via a multi V belt with a drum pulley of about 16" dia ( I scrapped it before I measured it). 

If you get one of these be sure to get the controller too, the motor would be useless without it. My machine had a very detailed wiring diagram that clearly shows how to wire the motor.

I dont know what Ill do with it, now its just more 'stuff' cluttering my shop.


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## jmshep (Feb 6, 2013)

I can recommend the following book:
Electrical Motors in the Home Workshop by Jim Cox ISBN 978 185486 133 7
It covers using and  recycling of all sorts of motors including the type that you have. 
Only costs about £7.00 in the UK

Regards


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## OrangeAlpine (Feb 6, 2013)

It is common for washer motors to be reversible, as well as two speed.  Reverse automatically engages a high speed drive train for the spin cycle.  That makes wiring pretty complicated.

That's all I know about washer motors.

Bill


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## dman (Feb 6, 2013)

tapped field is one speed, full field is another. don't hook them up at the same time. i'm not actually 100% sure which is high speed but i beleive tapped to be high speed. it's counter intuitive that having less of what makes it a magnet to give more power but with more windings the resistance and inductance both go up so it has a two fold effect on total impedence and current draw drops and the time it takes to saturate the coils goes up, i don't know that much about brushed motors or atleast the matematics that go into them but i'm pretty sure that's how it works..


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## kd0afk (Feb 6, 2013)

I found a pretty straight forward speed control circuit yesterday.


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