Treadmill motor speed controller for less than $30

[Music] this is how I built my treadmill speed controller for less than $30 complete well hello and here today on the rest of glovebox what we're going to do today is I've acquired a treadmill motor a while back and it did not have the control board with it I think that's why the motor was available here's a shot of the motor it is a hundred and thirty volts and it is a counterclockwise rotation two and a half horsepower something that I liked about this motor this flywheel is put on with a set screw and a keyway so I'll be able to get this off depending on what project I use it on [Music] well here's a very common little speed controller this one that I have is 10,000 watts and so it's pretty big as far as speed controllers go this but because this is AC I need to convert it to DC power but this will get me the variation that I need one thing that I'm going to have to change on this is going to be the little rheostat and this one is a 200k rheostat the one that's in here is a 500k rheostat and it's probably would be easier for me to show you why I need to change it out and explain it well here I wanted to show you my power cable and how you connect it to the speed controller what I've done is sucked on ahead and soldered these ends so make a nice connection I've made a little jumper lead off of the common cable and this is your power cable where your 110 this controller it has the capabilities of using 220 so if 2 20 is your current that you most commonly use it'll work with it also all you'll do stick that in that terminal till it's snug this is my neutral or common and I look on this and it has common terminal here and it goes to the end and I'll tighten it down also [Music] all right I've changed colors on us here this is my blue lead you could make it any color you wanted but here in the center of the speed controller is the out terminal I'll put it in that slot tighten it down and so basically that's our connections I have a ground off of my electrical plug and I'm going to go ahead and ground it to the body of this heatsink well this is my bridge rectifier and it's going to change the AC current into DC current by using a diode in there what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my wire that's going to be controlled it decreases or increases the amount of voltage going in to the bridge rectifier I'm going to put it on my AC and this is my neutral or common wire and I will put it on the other side so on your bridge rectifier as you can see for the AC you go from corner to corner diagonally this is what I've made next and this is very optional you don't have to do it it's supposed to absorb some of the voltage spike whenever you're changing your voltage to your DC motor and what I got was just this little uh I think it's fair right ring cheap he's like a dollar and a quarter something like that I used about two two and a half foot of just automotive grade wire and wrap that around all I had at the time was just the white wire so I took some heat-shrink to indicate which one was going to be my negative and positive from a DC motor [Music] well my motor already had the terminals on it and so that made it easy on connecting [Music] and what I wanted to show you is the reason why you want to change the little rheostat is when you start turning in your controller own and you're watching your motor we've already moved the switch halfway and I'm just now I've moved it 3/4 of the turn and I'm just now getting the motor to move and at the slowest speed [Music] it was that right at 484 rpms so the little controller works really well need to change the wrist at out so you can have more control at lower speeds [Music] [Music] [Music] we're going to give you a final look here's where I've bolted the rectifier to the heatsink to help dissipate any heat that it might build up I've attached my ground and my cable so I'm not jerking on the wires all the time hey guys I hope you find that a helpful on making your DC speed controller for your treadmill motor for any number of projects you want to use it for in your shop you could use it for your drill press for a small lathe even building a belt sander so anyway we'll see what develops with this and I'll be thinking about what I'm going to use it for so as always I appreciate y'all coming by the shop this is rusty glove box and I'm out of here [Music] you

Channel: Rusty Glovebox

Views: 129,003

Rating: 4.837872 out of 5

Keywords: cheap speed controller, cheap treadmill speed controller, treadmill motor, speed controller, Cheap, rusty glovebox

Id: T22pJMIAIRQ

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 05 2018