Repair of ARCOY power plane

[TNC]

I have an ARCOY power plane circa 1960s. Although it is built like the proverbial battleship I have have found that its weight greatly improves its control and effectiveness so I would really like to keep it going.
Unfortunately it needs the attention of a rewinder as it is prone to "spark out" taking
with it the RCD!

In my immediate area (SE Essex) I can't find any rewinder prepared to take it on...so would be very grateful for any pointers to one who might.

Thanks,

Trevor.

[Crackle]

Hi Trevor
Have you tried new brushes.
In addition, cleaning the commutator gaps of carbon deposits, the other thing to try is check continuity between each segment of the commutator, sometimes the rotor windings are just crimped into the segment and continuity is lost at this point, sometimes a clean and recrimp could help.
Mike

[Crackle]

Hi Trevor
When I was at the Towngate Theatre we used to use this company in Leigh for rewinds to our stage and hot air heating motors.
It looks like they are still in the same place and still going. http://njelectricmotorwinders.co.uk/

Mike

[TNC]

Thanks for your observations Mike.
No I haven't got around to opening it up yet....perhaps a bit of cowardice on my part....!
It looks to be a bit tricky and in the past I have often found that to extract the armature, small sized bearing pullers are required....and I don't have any!
Looks like I will have to man up and have a go!

Trevor

PS...BTW Mike I had already tried the company you suggested...unfortunately they won't touch it!

[boater sam]

You may find someone to rewind the field if needed but you will struggle to find anyone to rewind a brush motor armature. If you are lucky the windings will be OK but may have one or more come disconnected at the commutator or 2 or more segments shorted together. If you are out of luck, you will have a short to core somewhere.
It may be that the armature or even the whole motor is made by someone else and may have spares.

[TNC]

    Coming back to this topic...I tried a couple of specialist re-winders in the area and neither was prepared to look at it so I decided I had nothing to lose by dismantling it myself!
It's made to battleship standards so although heavy and a little awkward, it actually came apart relatively easily other than extracting the field windings/laminations which are a very exact fit in the circular motor casting.
Examining the field coils I could see no evidence of electrical stress or damage to the leads and they checked out in terms of continuity.
Turning to the armature, again I found no lifted or damaged solder connections to the commutator. I didn't count the number of segments but it looks like around 50. There was quite a bit of carbon in the separating slots so I cleaned all that debris away and gave the commutator a modest polish.
However what I did find was that some solder had clearly melted and found its way between the outer segments of the armature. (See photo) My question is could that account for the motor's malfunctioning (sparking out and tripping the RCD)?
I was pretty sure it shouldn't be there so I spent some time with the Weller clearing this away and ensuring there was no continuity between the segments.
The reassembling went fairly well apart from the reinsertion of the field assembly and the tucking away of wires away from the armature which was difficult and a bit nerve wracking.
Time to switch on...and it seems to be much healthier. The brushes spark a fair bit but it held a steady speed and power output is good.

The test will come when it's asked to do some serious planing but that is a few weeks away.

Grateful for any comment/observations.

Trevor

[Murphyv310]

Raewinds in Galston Ayrshire will do this kind of work.
http://www.rwscotland.co.uk
Worth a try if you get stuck.

[ex 2 Base]

Armature winding on small motors is a thing of the past. Very time consuming(hourly rate) and the armature requires precise balancing otherwise excessive sparking at the brushes, even when the armature has just been rewind and the bearing soon fail. I've never seen rewind shop in UK with a precise balancer for small armatures, we throw armature away here in UK. Go to the third world and you will get it fixed almost by return and they do have balancers, often made in Italy. Being interested in rewinds, I was a few years ago in Istanbul and was walking along a road and smelt the odour of hot varnish, my nose took me to a very small winders shop. The owner spoke some English, I asked him where do you get fine gauge wire from, the TV repair people he replied. I then located the TV people, boys were removing the scan coil wire, winding it onto bobbing's ready for rewinding. Other lads were stripping boards, some were testing resistor, capacitors and transistors quite a recycle/cottage industry. All component were moved up the street to the TV repair men/lads. Every thing is repairable in the third world. Ted

[Murphyv310]

I'm not sure I agree.
The company above has rewound many motors and armatures for me when I was working for a company that repairs industrial cleaning equipment. They go back a long way and before they rebranded were doing work from all over the UK.

[alanworland]

I had a problem with my workshop VAX cleaner, kept putting the earth leakage trip out.
Although the brushes still had plenty of life left in them there was a lot of carbon dust evident, cleaned it all out, well, as much as I could and it has run fine since.

Alan