Reversing a Baldor Motor

[KurtHuhn]

Every once in a while, I find a little gem of info that I had to work really hard to find out, and saves my bacon. Today I found out a little tidbit about those Baldor motors that we all love.

This motor:
http://shorterlink.org/2716
turns clockwise. But that can be entirely wrong depending on what you want to use it for. A belt grinder, for instance, is going to need that motor to turn counter clockwise. And if you want to use it as a disc grinder for shaping, you'll want to turn it counter clockwise as well (at least I do).

That motor is advertised as reverseable, but there are no diagrams on the motor itself for actually rewiring it to run counter clockwise. And there's absolutely no info on the Internet that I can find about reversing a single-phase Baldo motor. There's lots on 3-phase, but that doesn't help us.

Anyway, I found out that, since this a capacitor start motor, you just need to reverse the starter winding leads to make it run the other direction. The procedure is simple:

• unplug the motor from power (duh)
  open up the square box on the side
  look at all the leads tied to the black wires coming off the switch and find the numbers imprinted on the insulation
  you should have 1-3-8 tied together to L1, and 2-4-5 tied to L2
  unscrew the wire nuts and swap 8 and 5
  replace the wire nuts
  you should now have 1-3-5 tied to L1, and 2-4-8 tied to L2
  put the cover back on

Plug it back in, flip the switch, and bask in the counter clockwise goodness.

Now it will run the right direction for drilling/boring by hand, belt grinders, and (at least for me) shaping with a disc.

Enjoy!

[LexKY_Pipe]

If you have a lttle electrical knowledge, you can put a switch in so that it switches the leads mentioned by Kurt and you then can have it switched between clockwise and counter-clockwise. The switch can be mounted externally to the motor even.

[KurtHuhn]

True. A drum switch would be a good addition if you needed the motor to run both ways. A discussion of drum switches, as well as 220V operation is here:
http://www.metalwebnews.com/howto/elec- ... c-mtr.html

[munkey]

Kurt, the information was probably hiding in plain sight. On the tag that has all the info on the motor there are little wiring diagrams for 115 and 220, it also tells which wires to swap to reverse rotation.

[KurtHuhn]

On the tag that has all the info on the motor there are little wiring diagrams for 115 and 220, it also tells which wires to swap to reverse rotation.

You're kidding me! Yours has a wiring diagram? I looked all over my motors to find some sort of wiring diagram, I even pulled the capacitor cover looking for something in there. I wonder if there's a couple different version of the tags. One that has the wiring diagrams, and one that doesn't? WTF?

[munkey]

Here is a highlight of where it is located:


Thanks to the ebay baldor guy for the image

[RadDavis]

Every motor I've ever owned had a wiring diagram.

Rad

[KurtHuhn]

Code: Select all

                             ____                              
               ____  , -- -        ---   -.                    
            (((   ((  ///   //   '  \\-\ \  )) ))              
        ///    ///  (( _        _   -- \\--     \\\ \)         
     ((( ==  ((  -- ((             ))  )- ) __   ))  )))       
      ((  (( -=   ((  ---  (          _ ) ---  ))   ))         
         (( __ ((    ()(((  \\  / ///     )) __ )))            
                \\_ (( __  |     | __  ) _ ))                  
                          ,|  |  |                             
                         `-._____,-'                           
                         `--.___,--'                           
                           |     |                             
                           |    ||                             
                           | ||  |                             
                 ,    _,   |   | |                             
        (  ((  ((((  /,| __|     |  ))))  )))  )  ))           
      (()))       __/ ||(    ,,     ((//\     )     ))))       
---((( ///_.___ _/    ||,,_____,_,,, (|\ \___.....__..  ))--ool
           ____/      |/______________| \/_/\__                

That, gents, is my head exploding. I just took a look at the fine print on that tag, and there it is. I'm half tempted to delete this thread so that there's no evidence of me being a dunce.

[munkey]

Hahaha.

Man, I'm glad I'm never a dunce.

<cut to hours of clips of me looking all over my shop for something I just had in my hand>

[Frank]

ROFLMAO!!
BAD MUNKEY!!

[ArtGuy]

Man I just looked all over the friggin internet to see how to reverse this motor. I should have just searched Pipemakers Forum in the first place.

You delete this thread Huhn and I will come after you