Talk Composites - The Forum for Advanced Composites

Fixing a vacuum pump, motor running capacitor!

http://www.talkcomposites.com/Topic20099.aspx

By davro - 12/27/2015 2:05:12 PM

Hi All,

About a year ago I accidentally sucked in some resin into the my vacuum pump Sad Fool of a Took

This happened because I forgot the routine of empting the catch pot that had been gradually filling up over time my own stupid fault, I have since taken measures to ensure It does not happen again so easily.

I stripped the dual stage pump completely and removed any traces of resin from the inner workings and replaced the oil with new.

But the pump kept torque stalling when i reached about 0.8 of a complete vacuum, so I rebuilt the pump again adjusting the flat valves a few times only to have the same torque stalling problem ... Angry ... I ended buying a new smaller pump that I now use as a portable pump as the larger one is very heavy.

I could not bring my self to bin the old vacuum pump so I looked into the motor and the electrics, the single phase induction motor looked fine no bad marks, wiring looked good ... so the only thing left that I had not touched was the Motor Starting Capacitor and the Motor Running Capacitor. The motor was starting just fine but stalling apon reaching near complete vacuum ?

So I just thought I would share this little video about how to test your Motor Running Capacitor or any Capacitor really as replacing this Motor Running Cap has fixed the problem, and now runs as cool as it did before.



!!! PLEASE NOTE HANDLING CAPACITORS CAN BE VERY VERY DANGEROUS !!!
By Hanaldo - 12/27/2015 3:55:07 PM

Nice job!

Ive still got my old vacuum pump lying around in bits in my shed. Much simpler problem than yours, just a busted seal on the shaft. Don't have the time to fix it, can't bring myself to throw it out! Haha. Will fix it one day.