if your pellets or something else jam the auger...will the auger motor burn out?...or is jamming common and maybe auger motors are designed somehow not to be damaged by a jam??...the reason I am asking is I am working on an oddball stove....that uses a rotating tube to do the function of an auger...and the tube does rotate...but seems a little stiff...this stove is long out of production and I probably cant find a schematic for it and fear taking it apart unnecessarily....I might be opening a can of worms for nothing!!...if I break some gasket ..seal...or bearing I will surely have to expend a lot of effort finding another one..so I am thinking if I could reconnect the auger motor and try it and if it works then all is good.....but I dont want to do that if the auger motor would be damaged ....so what do you guys think?...can the auger motor be damaged by a jammed auger??.....
If your auger jams...will it burn out the auger motor?..or are they designed to withstand a jam..
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Harvey Schneider
Minister of Fire
The heavier the load on the motor the hotter it will run. If the motor is not rated as impedance protected, it will burn out if the rotor is stalled for any prolonged time (there is no way to be more specific). Impedance protected motors will not burn out promptly, but will run hot which leads to earlier failure. As a general rule, for each 10 degrees C (18 degrees F) the motor temperature is increased, the rate at which its insulation fails is doubled.
Hey Harvey...how can I tell if its an impedance protected motor?..would there be a way to tell from looking at it?...or maybe searching google for the motor specs?....
Harvey Schneider
Minister of Fire
Impedance protected motors don't look and different than unprotected motors. Usually the only way you know is that they say impedance protected on the label. What is different about them is that they have a high enough impedance (combination of resistance and inductance) that, even with a stalled rotor, the current will stay low enough that the coil won't fry (I've seen unprotected motors burst into flame; but that's another story).
My advice is that if the load makes the motor noticeably slow down, the motor is in trouble.
These induction motors run at very close to the line frequency divided by the number of poles on the rotor. There is always a little slippage so they run just a little slower. If they become significantly slower they are apt to stall. An induction motor with a stalled rotor is like a transformer with a shorted secondary winding. The inductance is low and the coil current rises. Power dissipated in the coil rises as the square of the current. The result is charred coil.
That's probably a lot more than you wanted to know. Sometimes I can't help myself. the Engineer in me takes over. Ask and Engineer what time it is and you'll get a dissertation on clock mechanics.
smwilliamson
The Stove Guy
Gleason Avery motors and Merkle Korff motors generally seem to have this, Multi-Products and GCM will torque out and destroy the feed systems or their own gearbox from what I have seen
smwilliamson
The Stove Guy
Harvey Schneider
Minister of Fire
If a motor is destroying the gearbox, the motor was oversize for the gearbox. It's a tough problem, the motor manufacturers mix and match parts to meet customer demand and some of the combinations become marginal at one extreme or another. Locked rotor is really tough to handle. If the motor is too small it will probably fry, if it is too large (too much torque) it will tear the teeth off the gears in the box. I'm not sure which is better or which is worse. It's probably cheaper to replace a burned coil than a gear box.
Tim_M
Burning Hunk
I had my auger jam last winter in my Whitfield Profile 30, due to a stone in the pellets. I removed it and the stove has been working fine ever since. I guess there's no way to know whether the motor life will be shortened as a result. BTW, I reported the stone to the pellet mfgr Shaw (Eastern Embers), and received a coupon for 10 bags. They're still my favourite pellets here in NS.
if its a Harman, YES, one of the primary gears in the gearbox is nylon, and I have seen this gear stripped if, say, the fines chanber gets packed tightly.....impedence, etc, I dunno abt that.....have seen some stripped with packed chambers tho...
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