Use for all my salvaged electric motors and switches

I am a person that can't just throw an appliance or broken tool away. I see all of these switches, pumps, and motors there and I just have to salvage them. My trouble is that I can't settle on a use for them. I keep rolling over one idea after another through my head and getting stuck on exactly how to combine this with that to make anything work. I have pressure switches, trip switches, float switches, and electric motors, pressure pipe, galvinised pipe, steel tubing, and a host of other parts that I have collected over the years, but I am stuck on the brain storm of what to do with all of this. I even have a mobil wheel chair that has been scraped, still compleat with battery powered motors. Can someone give me the brain storm of what to build?

Welcome sawtooth13.

I too am a junkyard dog. I see motors, switches, brackets , specially formed pieces and hardware as potential building blocks not to be wasted by throwing away too. But I've gotten to where I can't be indiscriminate about my "collecting" because of limited room. This makes me only save those things that can be recycled into immediate projects. Those projects are usually a useful tool or piece of equipment. I'm a metal worker and occasional woodworker. So thats my focus. You don't mention your focus as that tends to narrow the scope of what one might suggest. Also mentioning what kind of equipment you already have helps. This site is full(if you can find them) of mod's done to existing equipment or building from scratch.

A prime piece of equipment here seems to be a belt sander. There are several examples in the archives. It just all depends what would be useful for the next level of your focus.

The simplest build is going to be bench-mounting a motor and adding a chuck. See here: https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...7128#post85086

For sure belt sander will top the list. The nice 2x72s are thousands of dollars new, and the most expensive component, the motor, can be salvaged from a free treadmill. Salvage the speed controls too, to control the belt sander motor speed. Also salvage the incline motor from the treadmill; it can be used to tension the belt. Along the same lines: weightlifting benches can provide frames for tools.

Here's a good video on wiring salvaged motors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2a1qhQbJSk

Ha, wish I could help, i have probably 200 motors, everything from a few volts DC to 220v 3ph. Buckets of switches, boxes of power supplies etc. A few things i would like to make are: tapping machine - from an old Craftsman "hand drill, drill press stand" and Snow tapping head, Lapping plate, slow speed wet grinder, tool post grinder, Mill table feed, etc. Would even like to add a stepper motor and rotary encoder to my rotary table. Which will give it 14,400 positions with a 1:1 ratio. make gear cutting and indexing very accurate. You come up with any great ideas let me know. Anything under 18v look into old computer power supplies cheap and powerful.

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Originally Posted by sawtooth13

I am a person that can't just throw an appliance or broken tool away... Can someone give me the brain storm of what to build?

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Welcome to the forums!

Your question is pretty broad, so I would start by asking "What do you need?" And from there I would search this forum and other tool forums & youtube for ideas.

I liken everyone's life to a "toolbox", and their experiences are their "tools"... everyone has the tools that they're proficient with, and I love to look into other folks toolboxes, both literally and figuratively, to learn about new tools or new uses for familiar tools. I have several long time friends who I can go to when I get stuck on a project or conundrum, and get their feedback on how they'd approach a certain problem. Very often, it's the more "eccentric" characters that have the most creative, outside-the-box ideas.

You've come to (one of the) the right place(s) to get your creative spark jumping.

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Originally Posted by sawtooth13

I am a person that can't just throw an appliance or broken tool away. I see all of these switches, pumps, and motors there and I just have to salvage them. My trouble is that I can't settle on a use for them. I keep rolling over one idea after another through my head and getting stuck on exactly how to combine this with that to make anything work. I have pressure switches, trip switches, float switches, and electric motors, pressure pipe, galvinised pipe, steel tubing, and a host of other parts that I have collected over the years, but I am stuck on the brain storm of what to do with all of this. I even have a mobil wheel chair that has been scraped, still compleat with battery powered motors. Can someone give me the brain storm of what to build?

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Hi Freemo here I once thought that the comments of the old wheelchair could be fitted toward the front of scaffolding with the controls up on top or possibly wireless you could then move it around with out getting off🙂

Right now it seems I am just adding and adding to the collection. Hopefully one of the days I will see a actual application.
But for now they are all taking up space.

I really wonder about use for a AC motor, DC motors seem to lend themselves to modified usage much better, but all I have are AC motors.

Ralph

Ralph

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sawtooth13

I am a person that can't just throw an appliance or broken tool away. I see all of these switches, pumps, and motors there and I just have to salvage them. My trouble is that I can't settle on a use for them. I keep rolling over one idea after another through my head and getting stuck on exactly how to combine this with that to make anything work. I have pressure switches, trip switches, float switches, and electric motors, pressure pipe, galvinised pipe, steel tubing, and a host of other parts that I have collected over the years, but I am stuck on the brain storm of what to do with all of this. I even have a mobil wheel chair that has been scraped, still compleat with battery powered motors. Can someone give me the brain storm of what to build?

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If you have children they would really like a power go cart built with bicycle wheels. It sits higher for visibility and wheel chair speed is safer. Enjoy

I hear your pain. I was at your point a few years ago, you are always hesitant to use something because you might need it for something different down the road!!! (right?) I finally started just making the things I need.

Pick one and make it. Use the items in your collection and get it done. Of course you should try to pick something that will help you with future projects. You cannot second guess yourself when it comes to what to use. Of course you need to be prudent and try to be frugal in your use of your treasures, but USE THEM. It is spring time, why not make a lawnmower blade sharpener and balancer

Right now I am building a milling attachment for my lathe. I have used part of an I-beam I had been saving for a log splitter. I want a mill more than I want a log splitter. Used up some heavy angle iron. Used up a piece of barn door track and some trolleys along with an old boat winch to hoist it on and off the lathe. Got a lot of good steel bars for from a heavy old dentist chair. Used an old trailer hub and bearings to make a heavy duty spindle. Sprockets and chain for the up/down Z axis movement of the spindle. Going to pick a motor from my supply for the spindle drive. Step pulleys for the variable spindle speeds. It is not complete yet, but working on it.

During the process of building one thing, you will find you need something to help you build it. Take the time to build that, then continue on your main project. I needed a good tool grinder to better grind cutting tools, so I took the time to build that. Next, I wished I had a surface grinder, so I made an adapter for my angle grinder that fits on my lathe tool post.

Imagine the Wright Brothers, then they needed something, they had to make it. They could not go to the hardware store, or online to buy one... no one sold airplane parts back then!!!!

You just have to do it!!

Difficult tasks become easier when you break them down into manageable steps. You are puzzled with what to do with your stock of salvaged materials. You can approach this like a maze, where you start at the end, and work your way back to the beginning. To do that you need to define a goal. Then figure out a way to incorporate what you have on hand to achieve that goal. Like others say we don't know what you want. So I think figuring that out is step one.

I'm another vote for A/C motors with a chuck. They may become something else but in the meantime, they spin some kind of wheel (large grinding, wooden wheel with sandpaper attached, leather wrapped polisher, sisal, sewn cotton, etc.) That way I don't have to keep changing things around.

Sawtooth - I'm like the rest of you guys. Piles of stuff that can be used for building useful things. I too have a number of the switch types you mentioned as well as various remnant lengths of pipe and fittings. And lots of motors.
First off, the switches. The type you mentioned are most useful with water systems, domestic, swimming pool, irrigation water, solar heating and marine where salt water corrosion isn't a problem. Not much else except perhaps limit switches for motorized motion. They need to be specialized for the use you have in mind if you are dealing with flammable, corrosive or any other hazardous liquid. Be careful there. It may work fine at first and then sometime later burn something down or explode in your face.
Pipe. Galvanized pipe is great for ground contact like posts to support something. Galvanize is a little hazardous to weld because of the zinc fumes. Plain steel, especially thin stuff rusts too fast but welds nicely and paint sticks to it. So building useful structures like tables and fixtures is easier with plain steel. Add a galvanized piece to it and it looks hokey. Heavy wall steel pipe galvanized or not makes good rollers to move heavy stuff on a concrete floor or as cheater handles on tools to get better leverage. Connecting heavy wall pipe together with fittings can be useful for building stuff as long as you are getting the fittings real cheap or for free. But pipe properly welded together is a lot stronger than threaded pile fittings if strength rather than rigidity of the structure is an issue. Note standard water pipes are oddball diameters and if a close fit to something you want to connect it to is important you may end up with a lot of extra work. Thin-wall pipe is nice for structures where weight and rigidity is an issue. (like custom sun shades or rain covers.) The most common sources of thin wall steel pipe are electrical conduit and exhaust tubing. A common source of thin-wall aluminum tubing is portable sunshades, tent poles, bike trailers and other consumer products. People throw this stuff away or recycle it when unusable. Aluminum tubing is hard to weld but there are a variety of mechanical connections possible. You gotta be creative here.
Electric motors fall into several types from the home handyman home shop viewpoint. 115 or 230 volt AC fractional size induction motors that run at one speed or a bit slower under load are common in appliances and shop tools. Common speeds are 1750 and 3500 rpm with a few at 1150rpm. Most standard frame motors of this type have 1/2 or 5/8 diameter shafts They are rarely found with gear heads to drastically reduce speed and increase torque originally made for industrial applications. Some can be wired to run in reverse. Motors out of modern large appliances are in this class but often have very poor or no protective covers. Shop tools for wood/metalworking aren't like that. Some AC single speed motors come in smaller sizes with 3/8", 5/16" or metric shafts. All these single speed induction motors are good for setting up with shop tools and various belts pulleys and couplings due to their simple standard shafts. Like old florescent lights they do not work with simple dimmer devices.
Among the common electric motor types is a generally smaller motor commonly referred to as a Universal motor. It is more powerful for its size but not well suited for continuous running at high load. It has brushes which spark and have low lives on the order of low hundreds of hours. It is favored for its light weight in portable tools. It's speed can be controlled with simple dimmer circuits. This control, however comes with a reduction in torque, not a increase in torque that comes with belts or gears at lower speeds. Most of these motors are built into appliances such that the housing for the motor is the specialized case designed to meet the use of the appliance. And usually the output mechanics rather than being a simple shaft is some unique mechanical connection unsuitable for most uses without major machine work. But there is a noteworthy exception, the use in a portable drill with a drill chuck that in addition to holding drill bits and hex shapes can also clamp on a shaft as large as 1/2" diameter like found in many smaller pulleys. Using one of these to drive a tool like a wire brush may require a way to clamp it down to a table so hand holding isn't required. In such a mode some creative way of holding the on-off trigger in an "on" position may be needed if the tool has no build in trigger lock. Absent a variable speed feature such as found in many modern tools an external dimmer device of adequate amps capacity can be used for a speed control.
Large DC motors with electronic controls that change input 115 volts AC to a DC current have been common especially in exercise machines. These are frequently found used at low prices. Unless you are well versed in electronics it is best to employ the entire motor and control package as came with machine and confining you creativity to repackaging the raw controls and dealing with mechanical connections to the new load to be driven. There are power limitations to these systems and much has been written on the subject. So I won't elaborate.
There is another type of motor that has occasional use in the shop. Typically a 115 volt AC device it is much used to drive small cooling fans using very few watts of power. These devices usually need some new covers and/or mounts when employed in a new cooling application. There is one other interesting application of these devices, useful because they are what is called "impedance protected". The large other motors become the harder they are to cool when fully loaded. And they have load limits above which the internal wiring overheats and burns its insulation.
An impedance protected motor is self cooling even with the current on at 10% higher than rated voltage and the rotor locked or missing entirely. It is used because cooling applications often involve the fan getting clogged and unable to turn. Rather than burn out all you need to do is free up the fan rotor. If it is both the missing rotor and fan (usually easy to remove along with its little shaft bushing mounts) its small size makes it a handy tool for demagnetizing small hand tools like screwdrivers. You turn it on either with a momentary switch or a small lamp to remind you that you forgot to turn it off. Not that leaving it on will hurt anything other than warming the immediate area at whatever your cost for electricity. The demagnetizing process works best if you insert the tool through the approximate center of the rotor opening one direction and withdraw it slowly in the other. The 60 hz reversals in the wires of the motor are going so fast that they just scramble the atomic alignment in the steel of the tool that gives it that annoying permanent magnetism.
Ed Weldon

In my last post I got pretty deep into electric motors; but it didn't mention one type to keep an eye out for. 30 or more years ago the appliance motor manufacturers were able to make two and three speed fractional hp frame 56 AC motors. The had a winding for each speed. I have found them primarily in washing machines made between 1960 and 1990. They seem to run around 1/2 hp at the top speed. I have installed them on two small drill presses and almost never have to change pulleys. Just us a DPDT switch for starting. Or two switches for a 3 speed set up. These were OEM fairly open appliance motors for which I had to weld up base mounting brackets to fit up on the drill press mounts behind the column and well above and away from the chips. I also found one very conventional frame 56, 1/2 hp base mount two speed motor off a 1970's motorized exercise bike thingie. I use that on my 6" atlas lathe. It has an internal self resetting circuit breaker if I run to heavy a cutting load. A bit of a nuisance; but very friendly for the lathe. It's been that way for 30 years and now that I have a bigger antique South Bend that little 2 speed motor will stay with the Atlas. Ed Weldon