Any large electric motor repair folks here?
 

I have a 1951 vintage elevator in my building. It has a starter generator which is maybe four feet long and nearly two feet in diameter. My elevator repairman told me yesterday the the commutators are getting carboned up and need cleaning between.

Naturally getting this maybe 3000 pound motor off the sixth floor level and out a window is something I would love to avoid doing, not to mention the loss of the use of the elevator for at least a week.

Are there tools available to clean the commutators in place and people with the skill to do this?

Tom W

Indeed. Does it have circumferential commutators or the flat disc type?

Generally older motors had Mica separating the Comms,and most connection failures result from "high mica"which can be ground away with a Dremel equipped with a tiny steel circular saw bit.

Please post a pic of the motor in question as I have a vast experience with things of that sort and would welcome the opportunity to assist you with what little I've learned.

Or you could call your local forklift dealership, since the majority ornew forklifts sold are of the electric type. Try a Yale or Hyster dealership

It is the type with the Mica.

I will see about pictures.

Thanks, Carleton.

Tom W

YOu mean try for a guy with the tool to cut my grooves out?

Tom W

TAW

I would strongly recommend bringing these guys in to help out. Another one is GE but I don't have their number/contact info handy. TAW has an office in Atlanta and travel all over the US.

Thanks, I will check that out too.

Tom W

On locomotives we use a special stone to dress the comutators on electric motors. Works great. Also sometimes we have to grind down brushes to fit if we dont have the right ones. If finding brushes is difficult I may be able to help we have some pretty large ones for 800hp traction motors and large generators up to 4000 hp

that's why i love this forum...

There are tons of comutators here in the Washington area. The roads are absolutely clogged with them.

You are 100% correct. When I read Tom's first thread I thought - Good luck with that.........geeze:D

I'm still waiting for RLEO to chim in about this topic.

Thanks.

I had a nice chat with a local father and son team who say they can 'stone' my commutator and pull the ends off and back cut the bars on site for a very reasonable price. (compared to removing it to do the work).

I looked at the plates. My starter/ generator is a 20 KW.

And I had a chat with the service foreman of the elevator service company I currently am contracted with and it looks possible that we may be albe to work out a new agreement which will be satisfactory to both of us.

I have worked through this problem like I have many through the years by talking with folks who do the hands on work. I can usually learn a lot by doing so. The encouragement I got here on the SF was a big help too.

Thanks, everybody!

Oh and I am not a bit surprised I found several folks with very helpful information here. We have a hard core of geeky problem solvers here! We just love to help folks figure things out!

Tom W