Treadmill score today

[skeer]

Lucked into a Lifestyle 1800 treadmill for free today. I’ve already disassembled it entirely but wow is this thing simple!
And the motor is physically larger than any I’ve seen before..the date code I believe is 1987.

Ryobi for scale. Best part is, speed control is a potentiometer using the grey, blue, purple wires.

 

[mike93lx]

What is the plan for it?

 

[skeer]

No idea right now but possibly a new bench grinder since it’s double ended.

 

[walta]

No idea right now but possibly a new bench grinder since it’s double ended.

Please don’t use it as a grinder without cast iron wheel guards.

Open wheels are a death trap. Someone happens to bump into the exposed stone. Since the stone looks undamaged, they think everything OK. But the next time the grinder gets used the tiny crack they started propagates and without warning the wheel explodes and chunks of stone are flying at 60 MPH.

Looks great for a drill press, lathe, wire wheel or buffer.





Walta

 

[skeer]

After I posted that about it being dbl-ended I looked and it's pretty obvious there isn't anywhere or way to mount the guards so... yeah. Bad idea.

But the drill press, I am looking at testing this on the DP600. IDK if it's got the torque I'd want but it doesn't hurt to try.

 

[ALinCarolina]

I picked up a free treadmill and used the motor to power a centrifugal honey extractor that was a hand crank one. Bought potentiometer off Amazon to control speed.

 

[skeer]

Oh man, this got me to thinking... I would not mind a small trommel. Our house has about 8inches to a foot of river rock on 3 sides, we are wanting to dig it all up and either do mulch or replace the rock but without all the soil and weeds. The rock was put down probably a decade ago so much has sunk, and there's a healthy incursion of moss and various small weeds. A trommel would be friggin super to separating the dirt out!

 

[skeer]

Update: I did throw this Leeson motor onto the DP600. Repurposed a dual breaker box to house the controls, I love it. Worthwhile upgrade.

https://imgur.com/a/rXM1hUY

 

[Beerhippie]

Another member of the treadmill-motor drill press club!

You have much better motor with the 2,500 rpm rating (more torque at low RPMs) motor. Mine's more like 6K rpms, so I had to gear it WAY down with pulley sheaves--really need a speed reducer pulley.

Is your controller the MC20? Do you have a big choke coil on the output (you should)?

Anyhow, here's mine, using an MC60 controller, somewhat modified as per Dazecars on Youtube (check out his channel):





Mine's in the company shop, so I had to add some safety features to keep OSHA from flying off the handle.

You also started with a much nicer DP than my old Darra. Gotta love never having to change a belt again!

 

[skeer]

Nope, the controller for this one is the Minarik in the first post. I’ve taken apart a couple in the past that had output coils. This one did not. I don’t understand their purpose enough to know if I should have one on this.

 

[skeer]

Wait.. is the coil akin to a ripple cap?

 

[Beerhippie]

Here's the choke coil for mine:



It's connected on the negative line from controller to motor. The choke smooths the out put from the controller, flattening out transients and spikes so keeps the motor happy with nice, smooth DC power.

I'm not familiar with that controller. Can you leave it set to a specific speed, turn it off and have it start back up, or do you need to turn the pot all the way down and come back up to speed? On my controller, that was a safety "feature" for treadmill use--I guess they found it inconvenient to have the 'mill start up at 5 mph when turned on. My controller just had the lead of one resistor cut, so soldering that lead back together fixed it.

Still envious of the motor. I've been looking for one like it. Ebay prices for those start around $70 BIN and go up from there.

 

[skeer]

Ahh right. I have a motor very similar to that one but I have no run across that controller just yet. I did have that motor using the MC-2100 on a small desktop DP but for some reason it could not keep torque. I think it might've been related to the SCR I was using.

I had to go google it up and yeah looks like the coil does the same as a smoothing capacitor. I need to put one on it and see what difference it makes. But this treadmill did not have one originally.

 

[skeer]

Something about this motor has bothered me.. the torque rating is stamped with 25 inch lbs. Seems like.....super low! The model number is not found on Leesons website but comparable ones sold by Grainger list a 1hp as 25.2 in.lbs. and 19.8 in.lbs. as 3/4hp.

A super weird way to measure torque for sure.