Hi YouTube, my name’s Geoff and I’m the Veg Oil Guy.
Today I’m going to be looking at electric wheelchair motors. It’s an unusual thing
to look at I know, but these motors are very versatile. They’ve got bags of power and
can be used for all manner of purposes. I’ve got a project coming up that I’ll share
with you soon but for now I just want to test this motor and remove the electronic brake.
As I bought this second hand on eBay, I don’t want to make any modifications until I’m
sure it works as the seller has guaranteed he’ll take the motor back if it doesn’t
work correctly. This is a 24 volts, brushed unit and you should
be able to see there are four wires… but that doesn’t mean it’s brushless. It’s
not a magmotor. Two of these wires are for the motor but the other two are for an electronic
brake. It’s critical this brake is not left on as the motor is tested as it will damage
the motor. Now I don’t want to keep the emergency brake but for now I need to circumvent
it to test the motor – then I’ll remove it.
Doing this is very easy. Just undo the two main screws on the top.
What you can now see is the emergency brake. It’s basically an electromagnet. With the
electromagnet off, the brake is one and vice versa. Electromagnets use a lot of power and
I don’t need the emergency brake, so I’m getting rid of mine. But for the moment let’s
just remove it. Again it’s just a matter of two screws.
Off comes the magnet coil assembly, along with a couple of metal plates.
To power the motor I’m going to be using an ordinary 12 volt car battery charger. The
motor is 24 volts but 12 volts will be fine for testing. Here I’m inserting a couple
of probes into the motors power connector.
Here I’d realised there was still a couple more parts of the emergency brake to pull away. No tools are needed here.
Now I apply the power and success, the motor is turning clockwise. It works.
But I want to reverse the motor as well, so it’s just a matter of changing the polarity…
swapping over the positive and negative connections. With that done we can now see that the motor
happily turns anti-clockwise as well. That means I bought a good motor on eBay.
This lever acts a like a clutch. When engaged the motors spins but the driving spindle doesn’t
turn. Useful feature… I think I’ll keep it.
Now I’m safe to permanently remove the emergency brake as I don’t want it. If you want to
keep yours, you’ll need to apply 24 volts to the black wires to power the electromagnet.
Anything less probably won’t do it. With the power disconnected for safety, it’s
simply a matter of cutting these two thin, grey wires that attach to the electromagnet.
There aren’t any bare wares showing, but I’ll add a little insulation tape just in
case. Now I can reassemble the motor cover without
including the electromagnet as it’s not needed. I’ve reduced the weight of the motor
slightly and certainly reduced the amount of power needed to use the motor.
With the cover in place and the power reconnected, it’s time for another quick test…
Yes, that works a treat. Job done. No doubt things will vary slightly between
makes and models, but if you need to remove the emergency brake from an electric wheelchair
motor, hopefully you now know how. If you’ve got any questions, just drop me a line.
And that’s it guys. A very short video, but one that I hope will be useful to someone.
If you enjoyed watching this video, please like it. If you didn’t like it, then why
not let me know why. I’m always eager to improve my videos.
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So that’s it for now folks, and thanks very much for watching.