Phonoland

Hi can anyone give me some advice,the magazine motor on my AMI Continental 2 is very slow but after a couple of selections it speeds up a little. If I take the motor out of box is it possible to take apart and clean up the parts inside.
Can I obtain replacement brushes etc,I seem to remember someone saying that you should not dismantle the motor as you can not reassemble
Hope someone can help
Regards John

Hi John,
If my great--but not too long, memory is correct--that model was the first to use an AC motor there--no brushes.
If that's the case, just oil the motor armature shaft, on both ends with 20 wt. ND oil, and you should be OK. If you want to--you might also attempt to get some oil into the gear box, but, once again, going from memory, that gearbox is complicated and can not be opened without the gears "falling out"---
IF, by chance, it's still a DC motor, you can replace brushes without removing the motor--just "un-screw" the "brush holder plastics"--Ron Rich

Ron, John, the gripper motor is AC made by Multi Products which is still in business and will rebuild that motor. From what I recall in the two Continentals I had the magazine was still DC.

If that is slowing you can disassemble it and clean the interior including the armature and gearbox. the brushes do not have external caps but are replaceable when the shell is opened. It is kind of flimsy -but you'll see how it is done when opened.

I suggest replacing the selenium rectifier with diodes and the low-Dc filter as well. As these motors age their bearings get somewhat glazed and the slightly higher voltage can speed things up a bit.

On the two machines I had I replaced the AC gripper with an original DC motor. I did this because this mech does not have an even set of stresses on the motor. The AC motor uses smaller, less rugged gears than the somewhat cruder DC version. As a result I often found the AC motors with broken gear boxes.

The reason AMI went to an AC motor was to implement a cam linkage that would allow for overtravel instead of jamming if the cancel solenoid didn't reset a pin in time. With the cam-AC motor the record would simply be put back into the rack and the machine would 'try again" instead of jamming and blowing a fuse.

Rob/NYC

Rob,
Are you sure ?? An AC "brush equipped" motor ??
Ron Rich

Ron, I guess I wasn't clear enough.

On the Continentals the gripper motor is an AC induction gearmotor controlled by a relay in a box connected to the same circuit that directly had operated the DC motor in previous iterations of that mech.

The magazine motor was still DC.

Rob

Hi Rob,
No--cuzz, I'm still confuzzed (my "natural state" !)--"AC Induction motors", have no "brushes"???
Ron Rich

Ron Rich wrote:Hi Rob,
No--cuzz, I'm still confuzzed (my "natural state" !)--"AC Induction motors", have no "brushes"???
Ron Rich

Correct...and none are implied here. The gripper motor is AC (120vac-BTW) from the K-Continentals -no brushes. The magazine motor is DC and does have brushes.

I suspect that AMI felt that they could only get accurate indexing of the magazine with a DC motor using an armature shunt to stop it. When they went to an AC motor in the 1100 series the sprag took care of any drift.

Rob

Hi Rob,
You state above, while talking about the AC motor:
"If that is slowing you can disassemble it and clean the interior including the armature and gearbox. the brushes do not have external caps but are replaceable when the shell is opened. It is kind of flimsy -but you'll see how it is done when opened."
That's what confused me--
Ron Rich