What does the inside of an AC motor look like?

In this video we tear apart an AC motor to show what it looks like inside.

[hztolife]

A video on hooking up relays to a relay box while collecting a series of different things to turn on is a idea.

[LogixWorkshops]

Nice job, especially involving the kids. Your doing a great job Tim!

[melfrank]

There are three types of motors, #1 shaded pole, #2 capacitor start induction run and #3 capacitor start capacitor run. Type #1 uses no capacitor but yours does have a start winding that is in the circuit upon start up and is disconnected with the centrifugal switch during run. The start winding is the smaller wire winding which produces more torque for the start up that is needed. The only thing that would prevent your motor from starting without doing it manually by hand is either the centrifugal switch is not making good contact, internally the common connection inside the motor winding is not connecting to the common end of the start winding, or the start winding has a breakdown of the insulating coating on it's winding causing current to travel across the winding instead of through it, giving you too weak of a magnetic field to start the motor.

You are correct, it is a shaded pole motor, but most smaller ones that do not have a heavy starting load do not have a separate start winding and controlling switch like yours.

[martintecnored]

Hi. Great family video! Armatures are usually associated with DC motors, this being a AC motor what you are looking at is a squirrel cage rotor. This type of rotor have bars not windings and the bars don't necessarily have to be isolated from the laminated iron core. In fact some squirrel cage rotors are build casting hot liquid copper or aluminum directly onto the iron core, since the melting point of iron is much higher than that of copper or aluminum. Also at 2:48 you can see 4 cables coming out of the stater windings going into the centrifugal switch. I am guessing that those 4 cables are 2 for each winding: 2 for the main running winding and 2 for the starting winding. You could usually detect which is the running winding and which is the starting winding by their resistance. Start windings have more resistance. My guess is that the motor originally had and externally mounted capacitor that connected to the starting winding through the centrifugal switch and was later removed because the capacitor went bad or the starting winding burned out. You could measure the resistance of the starting winding to see if it's burned out and if it's not try connecting it to a starting capacitor and see if the motor will start by itself without "roll starting" it. It would be a shame to see it get scrapped, newer motors are just not build like these old ones. Keep safe!