Blown Motor

Sunday evening the motor to my pottery wheel blew. Well, it basically just quit working. When I tried to center about 7 pounds of clay the resistance bogged the motor down. When I took every thing apart, I found that the motor was really hot and decided I had better get to finding a new one. I looked around and found that I could get a more powerful surplus motor for about half of what it would cost me to order a replacement from Brent (the wheel company). In fairness to Brent, their prices did match similar motors. It's just that I could get this particular one for much less. This wheel uses a permanent magnet DC motor, which is significantly more expensive than normal AC motors like you might find on most woodworking equipment. As I understand it, the DC is better at handling the variable speed control. As you can see it is much bigger. The only problem I have now is that the diameter of the shaft is 1/8 bigger, so Jason (older brother) is going to re-bore the hole to fit this weekend. He is a machinist, so hopefully it will be no big deal. I wired it up to the controller and it seemed fine. Of course, without having the pulley bored out I couldn't use it to turn the wheel. If all goes well, I will be back in business Monday.