News years Eve and I had a full afternoon of workshop time so a start was made on the motorization of the 'X' axis on the drill mill. After around 2 hours of lathe work the motor slowed up as I was taking a cut, quite a light cut into aluminum.
The motor was quite warm but I could still hold my hand on it so it was not too hot. I decided to stop there and see if it might be OK when fully cooled. Fast forward to today and the slowness is still there. BUGGER.
So it looks like the motor windings have given up the ghost and probably lost their insulation properties. I have had the lathe for 25 years so I guess that is not too bad a life.
However getting the motor off was a bit of a challenge, I was hoping I could remove it without having to bring the lathe away from the wall, but that was never going to work. Car jack, levers and rollers later (not to mention sweat - 35 deg. here today) the lathe was about a meter from the wall and I could access the motor. Still quite tricky to get it off but I persisted and it surrendered eventually. I looked up motor rewinders in my area and guess what, they are off work until Jan 15th BUGGER
Robert