I'm trying to motorize my grain mill.....

[DNisich]

So, I've read Mike Dixon's account of motorizing his and got inspired - http://hbd.org/carboy/motorizing_a_malt_mill.htm. I went to CL today and scored a couple free dryers. I gutted'em for the motors and they are definitely 115VAC units. Neither has their running rpms on the the labels but all of the replacement motors that I have seen online say that they are 1725 rpms so following Mike's plan should be pretty straight forward.

My question is does anyone know how to identify the 3 wires coming out of each motor? I was kinda counting on there being the regular black, white and ground. However, that just isn't the case with these.

Are there any sparkies out there that can shed some light on a simple way to proceed?

 

[MrFebtober]

The best way I can think of for identifying the wires would be to see where each one goes when installed in the dryer. I don't know if you can backtrack now that you've already removed them, but that would show you which was hot, neutral, etc.

 

[DNisich]

Yeah, I thought of that too but there isn't a simple circuit that stops and starts the motor in the dryer. There is an interlock switch for the door, an over temperature fuse/breaker, the timer and an interlock switch that senses whether or not the belt is present.

However, all of this stuff is away from the motor itself. I'm sure the motor just has the three leads coming off it so if I can identify which is which, I should be able to put an ordinary light switch on the hot side, tie the commons together and ground the unit to make it run.

I was just wondering if anybody had already used one of these and had already cracked the code on this situation.

 

[mr x]

Check the continuity of one of the wires to the case. You should find a ground lead there somewhere.

 

[DNisich]

Actually I did get to the bottom of this yesterday. Turns out that the 3 leads are the start of the starter coil, the start of the running coil and the tied together other ends of both. I read in an industrial electronics textbook that the starter coil usually has many more turns and a noticeably smaller gauge wire. On inspecting the leads, sure enough one was just like that.

I just wired the running coil to a switch that was connected to AC hot and tied the other end of the coils directly to AC common. Without the starter coil, sometimes I have to move the shaft a little by hand to get the motor started. But, it does turn just fine afterwards. Strangely, the motor will run in either direction. It just runs in whatever direction you start it.

Now I just have to run down to Grainger for a set of sheaves and belt. Then slap everthing on a board and voila, problem solved.