# Emco Maximat "Standard" motor repair



## smfr (Jan 2, 2012)

My mill motor refused to turn on yesterday. It didn't get hot, so I suspected an electrical problem. Here it is waiting to be taken apart:





The obvious culprit was the switch. Time to take that sucker out! The wires are labelled when I first took the motor apart after receiving it.





Silly me took the stack of parts apart without noting which way the cams went on the hex spindle. Luckily I have another motor on the lathe head, so could use that as a reference. To avoid making the same mistake again, I marked the parts with a pen, and made this handy reference:





I didn't see anything obviously wrong with the parts, but some contacts were pretty discolored. I filed them a little, and polished with 600 grit paper. After putting things back together, it works like a champ! Hope that picture might be useful for someone (perhaps me in a few years when it happens again!).


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## steamer (Jan 2, 2012)

Glad you got it sorted!

Electrical stuff gives me fits.....ask Steve Huck ;D

Dave


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## smfr (Jan 2, 2012)

Thanks Dave! It's a nice feeling to know some piece of machinery well enough that you can take it apart and put it back together again and be pretty confident that it will continue to work! ;D


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## Swede (Jan 3, 2012)

Nice work - Those switches can be monsters. My old mill motor was a 2-speed, reversible, three phase job, and the switch and the wiring was horrendously complex. I remember taking it all off to replace with a VFD, and was very glad I did not have to do any maintenance on it.


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