Trying to Wire a Washing Machine Motor To Power a Grain Mill

[Tinkerer 81007]

Jim, hope you are still around since this is 2021. I have same motor as you used for your photos on the first page and I'm looking to wire it for fwd and Rev with all three speeds. It looks like low speed winding (terminal 9, w-or wire) is is energized anytime terminal 8 (orange wire) is energized as they are connected inside the terminal block, so it looks like low is energized anytime high is not. Am I looking at this wrong?

 

[anorlunda]

Alas, our beloved Jim Hardy passed away. R.I.P. Jim. He is sorely missed.

I do have links to two videos that may help. Maybe not. It sounds like you're at a pretty advanced stage of knowledge already.

 

[dlgoff]

Alas, our beloved Jim Hardy passed away. R.I.P. Jim. He is sorely missed.

I think of him very often. I can still visualize him when he was setting in my rocking chair.

 

[Tinkerer 81007]

Alas, our beloved Jim Hardy passed away. R.I.P. Jim. He is sorely missed.

I do have links to two videos that may help. Maybe not. It sounds like you're at a pretty advanced stage of knowledge already.

Sorry to hear about Jim, he was wealth of information. Thanks for the videos, I haven't looked at them yet, but will before I put electricity to any of the windings. Had a Retired Navy electrician chief (non-practicing) look at a close up of the terminal block and washer schematic. He concurred that my observation was correct but did not see it as a problem. He said that I could disconnect the motor wire from the terminal and connect it directly to the power coming from low/med speed 3-way switch that I will be using. I'll follow up with results just in case anyone else stumbles across this blog looking for help wiring 3 speeds for this motor. Thanks!

 

[Tom.G]

Jim, hope you are still around since this is 2021. I have same motor as you used for your photos on the first page and I'm looking to wire it for fwd and Rev with all three speeds. It looks like low speed winding (terminal 9, w-or wire) is is energized anytime terminal 8 (orange wire) is energized as they are connected inside the terminal block, so it looks like low is energized anytime high is not. Am I looking at this wrong?

I haven't tried it, but looking at an earlier post starting in reverse may work if you reverse the connections to the start winding. That does mean that the motor must be at a dead stop, no reverse-while-running allowed!

Before it starts, Bm does not rotate just oscillates in the vertical plane. So the rotor does not know which way to turn.
That's because a vertically oscillating magnetic field can be represented as two uniform ones rotating in opposite directions
and the rotor is happy to follow either one after you nudge it in either direction.
That's key to motor theory - a rotating flux must have two components and their angle must not be 180 degrees. The start capacitor and its winding give you that phase shifted component , it's exact angle is not critical but somewhere around 90 degrees works best..

That's why there is a start winding, to provide rotation to Bm until the rotor has begun spinning. Once that happens it'll follow whichever component of Bm you picked and you can disconnect the start winding.

Let us know what you find.
I can't help with the 3 speeds though.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[Tinkerer 81007]

Yes, I'll be using a 4 way switch on the start winding circuit. Since start winding power drops out after the centrifugal switch activates, changing the switch position while motor is running will not have any impact until the next start. May power it up this afternoon and If everything works like expected, I will post a detailed schematic of the setup (based largely on Jim's fantastic work).

 

[Tinkerer 81007]

Good news! I was successful in starting forward and reverse and running all three speeds. Speeds were about 50 rpm higher than motor rating, but that may be the result of inaccuracies in my meter or power company running a little higher frequncy. Haven't tried depinning low speed wires from motor terminal block and just connecting together, but I'll do that this afternoon. Detailed schematic and photos will follow when I'm confident I have everything spot on.

 

[Tinkerer 81007]

Update. No discernable difference in parameters or operation when bypassing motor terminal block for low speed windings so I returned to original configuration. Look for a schematic before end of week (want to take my hand drawn diagram and recreate in a graphics program at work). Some pics, including hand drawn schematic, attached. Only thing I'm missing is the 15 amp in line fuse, but I have that on order.

Pic 1 is hand drawn diagram. Look for better one later this week.

 

[Tinkerer 81007]

Pic 2 is motor terminal block with all wires connected.

 

[Tinkerer 81007]

Pic 3 is general shot of motor, harness, and switches. 2 way for on/off in single gang box. 4 way and two 3 ways in 3 gang box. 4 way (left) controls fwd or Rev start by switching direction of current flow through start winding. 3 way (center) controls fast or medium/low. 3 way (right) controls medium or low speed. I left harness at original length to give me plenty to work with.
(Just figured out how to add pic directly instead of as attachment)

 

[Tinkerer 81007]

As promised.