A Poor Practice on Generator Armatures

Tom Wesenberg

Tom Wesenberg

Well-known member
Yesterday while at the swap meet to benefit the Model A Museum I was helping a guy with his generator. The generator had a rewound armature. The rewind looked good, but it's too bad someone held the armature against an 80 grit belt sander to remove rust. The most I've had to do is hold the armature against a wire wheel to remove rust without removing any good metal. I wear cloth gloves so the armature spins freely against the wire wheel, and am careful to not get the wire wheel against the insulators and wires. When someone used the belt sander they removed good steel and increased the armature to field air gap. This will reduce the generator output. Remember, the magnetic pull is proportional to the distance squared, so if you go from an air gap of .006" to .012" the bad effect is squared, not doubled.

I've worked on a couple generators in the past 2 years where everything checked out great, but the output was bad. I installed another armature and all was good.
 
Dear Tom:

In one of your responses regarding use of the old generator but adding use of EVRs within the third brush area. Is there a vendor or supplier who does that sort of work?

thanks

phil
 
Wow! 80 grit, what were they thinking. I think that kind of stuff happens alot, as people who aren't "experienced" with physical/mechanical things, try to do their own work. More power to them, for trying, but maybe more knowledge is needed. Or, I suppose it could just be a slop artist at work? You see it everywhere, but looking back, I've done some boneheaded stuff myself. Oh well, maybe it's just a learning curve?
 
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