Hi. I would like to rewind with 30 gauge wire a three-segment toy motor which originally called for 50 winds per segment of 26 gauge wire. How many winds per segment of the 30 gauge would be equivalent? Each gauge is made from the same brand of wire. A second question: Does it matter whether I wind clockwise or counterclockwise as long as all segments are wound the same? Thanks for your help.
Well, I'd wind it with the same gauge wire as it was originally wound with, and I'd also wind it in the same direction as the original. Why do you want to reduce the wire size, it'll also reduce the power of the motor.
Thanks for your comment. This is a toy motor that came in a kit so I am just using it to learn about electric motors: how they are built and how they work. I will be ecstatic if I can just get it to spin let alone do any actual work. 30 gauge magnet wire is what I have and would like to use rather than buy more. The armature is not presently wound so I can't use that as a guide.
There is no way to do that. Assuming that the original design was correct, using anything other than 26 AWG will reduce the motor's performance in some way.
About the closest you can come is to make bifilar windings with the 30 AWG and a few more turns, perhaps about 55. But you may not be able to exceed 50, because the insulation will take up more space with the smaller wire. A bifilar winding has two wires wound together as a pair and, in this case, connected in parallel. Two 30 AWG wires in parallel are equivalent to about 27 AWG.
The brand of wire shouldn't matter. Be sure that you connect each winding to the correct pair of commutator segments. Fortunately, there are only three ways to do it.
Bob Nelson
P.S. I forgot to mention that the motor is designed to run off a 1.5 volt D cell and my hope is to just approximate a professionally built motor well enough to have the motor spin.
If you change the wire from 26 gauge to 30 gauge, the motor will want more voltage and less current. You will have more windings on the armature and that will raise the back EMF constant of the armature. If this is a series wound motor with a wound field, the motor is not going to like having its armature wire gauge changed. I think Bob Nelson's comment is a good one. Use two parallel strands of 30 gauge wire. That should be close enough to the 26 gauge wire that is specified.
Alternatively, you could check with Skycraft at www.skycraftparts.com. They have a large selection of magnet wire at low cost.
Bruce Baker
Very interesting thread.
Can someone explain more about the armature winding?
Why is the wire wound in the first place and what determines the gauge of the wire, the length of the entire winding, and the direction of the winding?
To help us laymen with this issue, what is the purpose of the armature? I know you need it, but why?
Rich
Alton Junction
Hi, Golddust2026. I rewound the armature & field coil & rebuilt the commutator on a Lionel Supermotor this summer. It had a bad commutator & a shorted field coil. I damaged the armature removing the commutator. I got a lot of information from this forum by searching for "armature rewinding" . There are a number of previous threads that explain most of the questions I had.
Here are pictures of an armature rewinding machine I built with a 2 RPM timer motor & a Casting reel. the fixture was built to hold a 1-95 armature.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/54020227@N07/
Byron
Sorry, coaldust2026 I'm sure you would rather have the gold dust
byron
I think for 50 turns of wire, I'd do it manually rather than build a rig just for one armature.
As far as the wire gauge, it'll certainly turn with #30 I would expect, but I'm virtually certain that the performance will be adversely affected.
Thanks everyone for the helpful comments. One further question: If I attach a strand of 30 gauge wire to a commutator contact, wrap 55 turns and connect to the next contact, then go back to the original contact and do the same again, will this have the same effect as though the two wires had been wrapped simultaneously side by side?
richhotrain: the armature is the part of the motor that does the spinning, which when connected to gears then wheels causes the electric train to move. The basic idea is this: Winding each segment of the armature and running electricity through the windings turns each segment into an electromagnet whose North or South polarity is determined by the direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, in which the current is flowing through the winding. When the armature is placed in a magnetic field which has its own North and South poles, it is the push and pull of like and unlike poles that leads to the spinning. There's a lot more to it, of course, which I learned from doing an internet search on "How electric motors work".
No. If you make two separate windings on the same pole and connect them in parallel, they will not encircle exactly the same amount of magnetic flux. This will cause a current to circulate between the two windings. But, if you use a bifilar winding as I advised, with the two wires right together, the encircled flux will be the same and the motor will not be slowed nor overheated by the energy lost in that circulating current.
Thanks, Bruce, and thanks again, Bob.
coaldust2026 richhotrain: the armature is the part of the motor that does the spinning, which when connected to gears then wheels causes the electric train to move. The basic idea is this: Winding each segment of the armature and running electricity through the windings turns each segment into an electromagnet whose North or South polarity is determined by the direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, in which the current is flowing through the winding. When the armature is placed in a magnetic field which has its own North and South poles, it is the push and pull of like and unlike poles that leads to the spinning. There's a lot more to it, of course, which I learned from doing an internet search on "How electric motors work".
Thanks, that explanation helps a lot.
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