Thread: Electric Motor Query

Slow speed start is a desirable facility on some woodworking tools like routers.
I was speaking to a neigbour of my parents and he made one of his lathes out of a washing machine motor

My only experience with single phase 4 wire motors have a separate control box to the motor, e.g. submersible bore hole pumps. You need the four wires as you have an earth, neautral, run winding and a start winding. The latter has the capacitor mounted in the control box remotely from the motor. This may explain why it is slow to start, I can't see why a dishwasher would need a soft/slow start mechanism.

Apart from this you will need someone who actually knows what he is talking about, cos I don't, never have, and never intend to do so.

Bob the 4th wire could be to reverse the direstion , bring in interpols these allow faster speed as on a lot of washing m/c motors or for a capaciter start.Can't tell anymore than that without looking at the motor and windings

The slow speed start is because at start up a motor drawes 6 times the amperage as it does when running thus capaciter start or stepped start as you would huge cables for direct on line start at full speed.






I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.

You will find the capacitor in the control panel of the dishwasher. Normal starting time for any single phase motor is seconds as they are not designed to run for long periods on the start windings. These are fine wire windings and overheat easily.The capacitor gives it a kick start to get up to speed the change over to the run windings at a lower current level.

Bob, Don't know if you still have that Betts motor from dishwasher. If you still have it and have not used it could you contact me [email protected] as I am looking for one. Can anyone help?