Old garage door motors, $0 geardown..

[vanilla ice]

I opened up an old garage door opener yesterday and it has a 24vdc with a nice quiet gear down attached. If you guys see these things curbside, might want to grab them and check them out. Curious how much of a load this thing can take..

 

[TylerDurden]

Interesting. Most of mine have been 110VAC motors (Craftsman, Overhead) with gear reduction. One older model had a belt.

Got a make/model year? Pics?

 

[liveforphysics]

Things that don't run long enough to heat up often use bushing rather than bearings in the gear sets. Make sure to examen them before spending too much time fitting it towards an E-bike tranny.

 

[vanilla ice]

The geardown for sure makes it tempting. I'll probably not use this for a bike though. Maybe for a gate opener. It has a two speed ramp up circuit and I was really wowed by how quiet the gears are.

 

[liveforphysics]

That's a worm-gear bro.

Looking at huge heat, huge losses, and it's likely bushed. Just fine for a garage door, fail for e-bike.

 

[spinningmagnets]

I just replaced the worm-gear set in a Craftsman that looks similar to that (roughly 8 years old from a new house installation). The gears were both plastic, but perhaps the motor might still be useful for some E-bike project...if any of you have a similar garage door opener, re-grease these gears every year to save the cost and hassle of having to buy and install a new gear set (colossal PITA).

 

[vanilla ice]

Heh, no wonder its so quiet.

I was surprised it had a DC motor inside and I wanted to share. Sucks about the worm gears. Oh well no worries, like I said its slated for gate duty.

 

[amberwolf]

If you want a real laugh, go back to the start of my ebike blog where I thought I could use a power-window motor out of the 85 Ford LTD to drive the bike. :lol:
EDIT: bit of info in this post: http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=231003#p231003

It's just about identical in design to that GDO motor, except 12V instead of 24, and has a slipcam in it so if the window encounters resistance (fingers, end of track) it'll just spin the motor without pushing harder on the object.

 

[REdiculous]

Garage door openers are intermittent duty only..for sure. Some won't even do 10 cycles an hour since the controller steps in.

As a gate opener it could be ok..yeah. Good idea there.

 

[rkosiorek]

Garage door openers are intermittent duty only..for sure. Some won't even do 10 cycles an hour since the controller steps in.

As a gate opener it could be ok..yeah. Good idea there.

these look almost identical to the geared accessory motors used in cars. they are used for power winders for the windows or for power seats. i have even seen BLDC motors used in some newer aplications. last trip i found a pair at the wreckers that had a rotary position encoder with 256 pulses per rotation. they were used in an aftermarket power seat. too bad i don't know what brand. all that was left was the lower metal frame with the motors.

another use for these is to make really beefy large size RC servos. i have used them to build remote control paint ball gun turrets. 360 degree rotation and +/- 30 degree elevation. add a pair of decent guns and you can get well over 30 rounds per second going down range.

but the motors really are too light duty to run continuously. the worm gears have the advantage of large gear ratios and a built in brake. with the motor stoped the output shaft of the drive is locked into place.

rick

 

[vanilla ice]

..these look almost identical to the geared accessory motors used in cars. they are used for power winders for the windows or for power seats.

Maybe in design, but I think these garage motors are much larger. The can is about the same size as some of the unite brushed motors.. I would guess it puts out 300 to 500W.