Safely discharging a capacitor

My 4-5 year old el-cheapo "Deltajet" (cheapest I could find at the time, for hosing mud off the bicycles) is a 1200W induction motor.

In the case of lawnmowers, I suspect the use of universal motors is to make mowers into consumables, which people will thus tend to change every few years. Just about every characteristic of a universal motor is inappropriate for a lawn mower. You can find mowers with induction motors, but they tend to be in the better quality less well known makes, which you have to buy from specialists rather than DIY sheds.

You can also get a more powerful universal motor in a smaller physical size, but generally they are significantly less efficient. E.g. you need around 30-50% more powerful universal motor to get same cutting power out of a lawn mower as you do from an induction motor, and the universal motor will run too hot to touch even with forced air cooling, whilst the induction motor only runs luke warm. I don't know if this is an inherent design issue, or if it just reflects that the induction motors are found in better specified/designed products. Also, universal motors generally run much faster, indeed much too fast for many applications where they need to be geared down (e.g. mowers, drills, etc).

I don't see why they should be technically. It may be a question of supply and demand, what the market will bear, etc.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel
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To stop the clothes getting tangled, also the stopping then going the other way will help stop areas of stagnation (and hence slow drying) occuring. Mine a "Tricity Bendix TM 220 W" certainly has this drum reversing indeed it is sold as a feature of this model and is called "reverse action".

Reply to
soup

Induction is cheaper for a specific power, or for almost all large motors. Brushed is cheaper for small low powered motors that still need high torque. If you can go to a direct-drive design, then using a brushed motor and no gearbox is usually cheaper, but you need a motor that can provide the required torque on its own shaft.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

I suspect the main reason there is power to weight/cost ratio. You can get a tremendous amount of power out of a compact universal motor but an induction motor suitable for that would be a lot heavier and more expensive. A universal will burn up at the drop of a hat though, a friend of mine retrofitted his electric mower with a surplus pool pump motor when that happened, he said it worked really well but those motors are expensive new.

Reply to
James Sweet

Well damn, I cleaned up and tested out the Creda dryer which is the mate for the washer I've been refurbishing and it does in fact reverse the drum periodically. Nifty little machine, not like anything I've used before. If the washer was a bit larger capacity and I didn't have a big Neptune front loader already I'd definitely keep this pair but a friend of mine has more of a need for them than I do.

Reply to
James Sweet

Ditto cheap high pressure cleaners. The £30 B&Q jobbies have a motor life of 10-12 hours. Even a cheap Chinese induction motor will run for 50-60 hours. Qua;ity industrial machine will have an induction motor rated at

800-1000 hours.

Ditto cheap high pressure cleaners.

Indeed. High pressure pump wants to run at 1400 rpm, or 2800 at a pinch. The cheapo HPCs use a ring gear to slow the motor down.

Maybe mass production. Many el cheapo HPC's use domestic vacuum cleaner motors.

Dave

Reply to
david lang

1000 hours sounds awfully low for a good induction motor. The 3HP main pump in my spa runs 4 hours a day for the filtration cycles and it's 10 years old. Isn't used year round but it must have at least 5000 hours on it and the bearings felt like new when I replaced the shaft seal. Theres well used equipment at a friend's machine shop with motors dating back to the 1940s that are still running strong.
Reply to
James Sweet

Depends on what you pay for them. On a cold water HPC the motor will be about 65% of the total build cost, so they don't use the top grade - besides, the pump etc won't last much more than 1,000 hours anyway.

Dave

Reply to
david lang

I think that you need to understand the market they are trying to sell into. When you see the claim "A CAPACITOR stores current." you see what level they are aiming at!

Reply to
Ascro

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