Wiring help

[Sickie Ickie]

Okay all you smart haunters, I need help on wiring a motor.

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h231/Sickie_Ickie/help.jpg

Above is my pic of what I have. It's the cassette drive out of an old cassette radio.

The motor says 6vdc and had 4 D batteries to make the cassette radio work. Can I use any size batteries as long as it totals 6v? Like AA's?

All ends of wires are cut.

The blue A and brown B wire look like they are hooked up to a microswitch. There is only one (?) wire coming from the motor. That would be brown wire C. I thought motors needed two wires to work? (+ and -?)

Anyway, I don't need speakers or the head reader or anything other than just the basic "play" speed and stop.

Any ideas how to hook this up to batteries?

Would I just be better off just using the motor and forgetting the gears?

Thanks!

[Dr Morbius]

I don't know what you want to use it for,so I can't say whether you should ditch the gears or not, but it looks like the motor is using the chassis for a common ground. Meaning, that the metal case is actually a "wire", negative (-) and the brown wire would be positive (+). I believe that bigger D size batteries put out more amps, or current than smaller AA size ones, although they put out the same voltage, usually 1.5 volts.

[slightlymad]

I have never gone smaller with batteries but I have hooked up latern batteries to replace D's. Doc covered averything else.

[Richie]

but it looks like the motor is using the chassis for a common ground. Meaning, that the metal case is actually a "wire", negative (-) and the brown wire would be positive (+). .


Sicky,

The above statement is exactly right. What you can do is either solder a wire to the chassis or drill a hole somewhere and screw a second wire on. As for the using the "AA" batteries, you can do this since you will not be dealing with speakers. Since it originally used "D" batts, it was obviously a table top radio/cassette player. Much of that extra power the "D" batts supply was for the audio/speakers. Depending on what you intend to use this motor for, it may be cheaper in the long run to go with rechargeable batteries. Good luck with your project.

[Sickie Ickie]

Yes, it was a table top radio/cassette player. I'm making a backwards running 13 hr clock illusion. :) You guys are fantastic! Thanks!

[Sickie Ickie]

Well, I found out the brown wire is [+] and actually contained a white wire inside the brown insulation that was [-] . The 4 AA batteries do just fine making the motor run. I chose to use just the motor, which makes the minute hand zing. On another that I'll undoubt. build, I may use the gears to slow things down. This may be interesting also, if I had built it so the hands spun when triggered. :)

[Sickie Ickie]

Okay, I need to slow the motor down. The minute hand is spinning too fast to even see it. I tried buying a dimmer (600w) thinking that would work, but it didn't even turn on the motor even at full power.

I'm sure there's a dimmer for itsy wattages (6w). What is is called that I should look for at radio shack?

[Richie]

Can you try using 2 "AA" batts instead of 4 of them?

[Sickie Ickie]

Thanks for responding Richie. I just now experiemnted with two, and it still moves too fast. So I tried one...and it still moves too fast to follow with the eye. So, what is that...1.5 v for a 6 v motor and it moves too fast still. Any other ideas?

[Richie]

Sickie,

Any voltage regulators that I've used require more power input into them to work. At this point, if possible, is there any way to install different gears or pulleys to slow it down? Using say, a Dayton 4 RPM motor would cost to much money, so taking a closer look at the drive system of the player motor should yield much better results.

[randyaz]

You might try resistors to limit the current...

[Sickie Ickie]

What resisters do I buy to try slowing it down more?

[randyaz]

not sure Ickie... might get a few 1000 ohm resistors and experiment...adding one till you get the desired speed

or try a 50k potentiometer...that may work even better...you could dial it in... and get it at rat shack


http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062355&cp=&fbn=Type%2FPotentiometers&f=PAD%2FProduct+Type%2FPotentiometers&fbc=1&kw=potentiometer&parentPage=search

[Sickie Ickie]

I'll try that randy, thanks!

[The_Caretaker]

Try a 10K multi turn potentiometer (a variable resistor)

[Sickie Ickie]

I'll do that caretaker, thanks!