Any ideas for putting a washing machine motor to good use?

[Bob Eager]

Secondary weapons: destroy tyre traction with WD40 spray and inject car body filler into the works

[The Medway Handyman]

Aha! So you admit WD40 is a lubricant!!!

[Bob Eager]

No, it just makes things slippery for a short time, so it doesn't inconvenience the attacker!

[geoff]

Be realistic - the earth will have entered another ice age before agreement on the design was made, negating the need for guttering

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Oh; we just called them, "drawers full of crap". One was usually to be found in the kitchen, next to the sink, containing all the useless bits of short string, rusty needles, ribbons, blunt scissors, thread, screws, cheap screwdrivers and pliers. I did have an idea for new home-owners, selling them a complete DFoC, but of a more useable sort. A proper DFoC takes years to accumulate and has a heritage to it.

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Grimly Curmudgeon writes

As well a few DFoC, I also have an LFoC, a GFoC and three SFoC - all the product of over 50 years of careful accumulation.

[Jules Richardson]

Dennis would have a fit about the health and safety aspects, and then report it for speeding.

[John Rumm]

Go to a washing machine spares shop and trade it for something you do want!

[John Rumm]

Yup, but it fires hot glue...

[Muddymike]

I believe you will find this explains it all.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

[Weatherlawyer]

Cor. A video of that would have been good.

[John Rumm]

that might come in useful somehow implausible ;-)

[staidans.hallhire]

Why not use the motor to power a project? See website calenterprises.The metal shell also makes a good tool cupboard.

[jgh]

Not presumably, actually.

jgh

[Brian Gaff]

Another old post then? Brian

[Roger Mills]

Yes indeed! I posted the original question nearly 2 years ago!

Can't now remember what I did with the motor - think I chucked it!

[Brian Gaff]

Yeess, often these things are so bespoke it is really pointless trying to re utilise them. I heard a good one the other day, apparently thedisc rotaion motors of cd and DVD drives are being used by aero modellers for driving the props round after suitable moods and a new driver circuit.

Good luck and I hope they don't fly apart on them lithium batteries they seem to use nowadays. Brian

[Gazz]

We've been using CD motors on aircraft for the last decade or so, they were the first cheap way to get a brushless motor in the hobby,

Nowadays you can buy ready made very powerfull brushless motors for peanuts it's hardly worth the bother, tho they do get sold with kits where you re-wind the motor to get a rev range and power suitable for a larger prop.

The li-po batteries going up in a ball of flames is a good special effect for war birds, that's if you are re-creating being shot down and crashing :)

I've been using li-po batteries for about 10 years now, treat them with respect and they are fine, and they are the biggest advance in model flight for a long time, so much power in such a light weight package... to think when i first got an electric model plane, it could hardly get off the ground due to the weight of the ni-cads, flew 4 minutes then the batteries were dead,

Nowadays i fly for half an hour on a li-po pack, and have to use lead weights to adjust the COG, as the pack isn't heavy enough like the old ni-cad packs were.

[Andrew Gabriel]

For an older machine, they are just universal mains motors with separate field and armature connections for reversing, and someones an extra field winding for the extra power on top spin speed. Some have a tachometer to feed back the speed if the machine is controlled by a microcontroller.

*However*, these are always run with speed or power controllers, and a load attached. If you try and spin one up without any speed control and without a load, some will spin fast enough for the armature to fly into pieces (rather explosively), so you should never do that.