The Wrong Choke will Strangle Your Treadmill Motor

[@thomastieffenbacherdocsava1549]

Just came up as I was looking on amazon....LOL! Ebay is outta my pocket range today! Thanks! Learning!

[@dazecars]

hope you find one

[@patrickbeaumier8616]

Made one with an old microwave, works nicely. Thanks for sharing. 👍👍👍

[@dazecars]

Glad I could help!!

[@dogcreek-customs5168]

Hopefully you reply, what about the one it comes with, mine came with one I am going to use it for a sheet metal bender for fire rings?

[@dazecars]

If your machine came with a motor choke then it is up to the task and good to use. The bigger ones on my video came from treadmills. Just make sure it is actually a choke and not a transformer.

[@philiphartley8823]

How is a choke rated . I have been trying to find one for a treadmaill motor but can't work out the rating. Can a capacitor be used as a choke.

[@dazecars]

Amps is the most important rating. Most are rated in Ma which means they will not be even close enough for a motor. The key to sizing a choke is get one labeled as a motor choke. If it's not labeled that way it is likely too small. A capacitor can not be used as a choke but it can be used as a filter. I will get you the specs off of the caps I have BUT my experience with using a capacitor is it caused surging under a load.

[@checopacheco420]

Super good stuff tanks 🎉

[@dazecars]

Glad you enjoyed!

[@3goldfinger]

The motor I have has a ring coil wired to it, if it was big enough for the treadmill, will it be big enough for the lathe?

[@dazecars]

some motors come with them and while it helps a little it is no substitue for an actual motor choke.

[@kylewellman402]

I am a victim of this choke from amazon. In my infinite wisdom, i purchased 2 thinking, well if it's not quite adequate, maybe 2 in series will be (tightens the noose over my motor). I resorted to making one from a transformer out of old microwave. I now know it is still not big enough. If you had to guess, what gauge wire do you think your lathe choke has? I have transformer cores i can use from old die cast machine panels that are softball sized that i can wrap. Thanks for all the videos you put out

[@dazecars]

16 awg is the minimum

[@Camoburb]

Similar to a microwave transformer/choke I took one out of a car battery charger. Removed the transformer coil however the choke has 3 wires. A blk on the left and right, and a red in the middle. Am I wrong in thinking this is a choke? If it is, would I just run the blk wires?

[@dazecars]

That sounds like a class 2 transformer. The gauge of the coil wire is probably too small.

[@Camoburb]

@@dazecars ok. Bummer. Thank so much for your response and for your time. I b appreciate it.

[@dazecars]

measure the wire to know for sure

[@Faysalariss]

Do you know the henry rating on the choke you have? I'm looking to get one from an electronics supplier with the right amperage but online I can't seem to find the right rating for it

[@dazecars]

Not being an electrical engineer I do not have any specs or calculations for you on the motor choke. What I can do however is offer you some guidelines. First of all bigger is better. I have several motor chokes ranging from the size of a tennis ball to the size of a soft ball and the bigger they are the better they work. Second the wire for the choke needs to be a minimum of 16 awg. If the wire is not that big or better it will not have the amperage capacity to allow the motor to work properly. Amperage is the most important spec. A lot of the chokes available online are rated in mA. there are 1000 mA in an amp. Treadmill motors are rated in amps so most chokes available online are several hundred times too small. Third they are not available from most suppliers at least not inexpensively, there are a few privet sellers on Amazon selling used parts for big bucks but the available chokes on amazon and electronic supply houses are too small because they are not designed for a motor even though they look correct in the picture they are WAY too small. The correct choke will be labeled "motor choke" because there are no other uses for it. The choke in most of my videos is part number 130993. Instead of getting one new I would get a used one. A lot of treadmills come with a choke. Go to eBay and search “treadmill motor choke” BUT know that most people on eBay don’t know what they have and the word “transformer" will also appear in most listings. Problem is a choke and a transformer look almost identical so some listings are for transformers and some are fore chokes because the sellers think they are interchangeable. They are not. They would only be interchangeable if you modify a transformer to work as a choke. (see my DIY choke video) To tell the difference count the wires. A choke will only have 2 wires, a transformer will have 3 or more. Also before I started doing videos chokes on eBay could be had for $25 or less shipped but now that more people are looking for them (due to my videos) the eBay sellers have raised their prices quite a bit. Your best bet might be the DIY option out of a Microwave transformer. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

[@chrishayes5755]

chatgpt says 20 amp motor -> 20 amp choke. 30 amp motor -> 30 amp choke (minimum).

[@dazecars]

Obviously amps need to be matched or the choke needs to handle at least as much as the motor draws or more so a 20 amp motor could be run with a 30 amp choke. Again that is why I said bigger is better. The specs that were being asked about are Henries, which is the comon spec specific to the frequency the choke filters out.

[@barrywaite2386]

Hi Daze? I have a question that i haven't found an answer to yet will a choke burn out or stop working

[@dazecars]

Not usually. There is no moving parts are friction points and they typically don't get hot. If you have continuity then it should be working unless there is a direct short near the leads bypassing the coil.

[@barrywaite2386]

Ok thank you started collecting treadmills one I might grab say's the motor doesn't work and the belt and rollers are very stiff lol was wondering If the choke was maybe the problem lol

[@dazecars]

To test the motor, disconnect it from the treadmill and then "connect" the leads to a battery. Do a quick touch rather than a full hook up. You will know immediately if the motor is bad.@@barrywaite2386

[@buder5116]

me what i want to know is how do you attach a v belt pulley to one of these if you dont have a lathe to resize a shaft to it

[@dazecars]

Take the flywheel to a machine shop for resizing or completely remove the flywheel and mount the new pulley directly to the motor shaft. Just make sure to add a fan if the flywheel was also the cooling fan.

[@buder5116]

the encoder is the fan lol @@dazecars

[@dazecars]

👍

[@raulc.]

Question for you, can I get two medium sized chokes and wire them in parallel to make them act like one bigger choke?

[@dazecars]

define medium? The small one on my video would take at least 16 in parallel just to handle the amperage. If you are talking actual motor chokes that can already handle the amperage than two of them in series could work or you could put one on the positive leg and one on the negative leg.

[@raulc.]

@@dazecars thank you for your reply. At this point the size does not matter. What I was wondering, was this. If I am using multiple chokes to control the current surges for a motor, do have have to wire them in parallel or in series? Because it is current we are trying to manage, I thought they would have to be set up in parallel. Am I correct?

[@dazecars]

@@raulc. power spikes are a function of voltage so series would be better for eliminating spikes. However if the wire in the winding was a little on the small side and the choke was limiting amp flow than parallel would be the solution. The size of the magnetic field has an effect on the effectiveness of the choke. That is why, as a general rule, bigger is better, because you have a bigger magnetic field, AND bigger wire to handle more amps.

[@raulc.]

@@dazecars that makes sense. Thank you very much for taking the time to explain. I have a couple dozen chokes. Many different sizes. I am going to perform some experiments with them. I am going to connect them in both series and parallel and hook them up to my oscilloscope and an amp meter. It'll be interesting to see the results. Again thank you for your videos and thank you for the explanations. Your video inspired me to conduct some of these experiments.

[@dazecars]

@@raulc. Sounds interesting, let me know what you find out. I would love to add your results to my knowledge base.

[@Kevin.L_]

Nice PSA.

[@dazecars]

Just trying to save people form wasting money 😁

[@terrystrahl3275]

Thanks! Enjoy a beverage on me !

[@dazecars]

Thank you so much!!!

[@Camoburb]

Its larger than whats in a microwave. I removed the upper transformer portion.

[@dazecars]

okay no not a class 2 transformer. You need to use a meter to check continuity and you need to make sure there is only one coil and no other wires. a single strand of wire running through the core would be considered a coil.

[@wantlessobject]

That's what I did. Wouldn't even work at all.

[@dazecars]

You are not the only one, I heard from at least 6 people that did that and I am sure there were many more I didn't hear from.