Walker Turner -- Keep or Dispose?

pontiac428 said:
John, there is an old-fashioned electric motor shop over here in Bremerton called Red's Electric Motors. They have a great reputation. If you ever cross the bridge to the peninsula, you should stop by and have them take a look at it. It may not cost as much to rebuild as you think, and it would certainly cost less than a new motor. The oldies are goodies.
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Just talked to Red.....nice guy, and wants to take a look-see!
silverchips said:
One very easy test that I recommend is wire to a different power cord directly wired to the motor terminals/wires found inside in the motor access box. wire it up with it's own 120v cored with plug (not the DP's one), important to bypass all the wiring, switches on the drill press. Just wire it directly to the motor and plug it directly into an electrical outlet to see if it works with or it trips the breaker. Thats if you're comfortable wiring that. Wiring a power cord directly to the motor is actually really simple, doesn't have to be anything special and just plug it into wall outlet to turn on and unplug it to turn it off. You'll know right away if there's a problem of not. If there's no problem like that, then it will be easy fix to improve the wires and power switch.

There were no pics provided of your motor but based on age of your drill press, if you take the small cover off the motor it should look approx something like this?
If your motor is a Wlaker Tuner the wires are colored or numbered. Does your motor have a cover plate like the one below showing a wire diagram?
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Fairly straight forward to wire up and test if you have the wire diagram.

The reason why I recommend this test as there might be some wires in the drill press or in electrical cord that are crossed or exposed and touching each other causing the breaker to trip and not being the motor. If the tech at the shop can be trusted and it ran fine at the shop, then I suspect the issue is somewhere in the wiring system on the drill press and not the motor.

Only yesterday I had the same issue with a tripper breaker every time I tried turning on a machine that I moved outside, I used an extension cord to power with one that I picked up at tool yard sale with a bunch of other things. The issue ended just being the the power cord being bad and shorting.

PS> Brushless servo motors you asked about are a great option but there new to drill presses and it's like adopting a treadmill motor, its not so simple and involves quite a bit of wiring work and will need some customizing to make it work/adapt on a drill press. I would first recommend trying the test I mentioned above and see if you can save this motor.
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I just did the direct wire test you recomended.....Runs like a scalded dawg! Now to figgure out where the problem is, since the motor is obviously super.... THANKS SIR!D97BB708-2B41-466A-A6AD-17A0C5CCA710.jpeg
 
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johnbgood said:
Runs like a scalded dawg!
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Not sure if this a good thing or not? Does the motor run smooth and quiet. If thats the case, congrats and great news.

I recommend just abandoning all the wire, connectors and switch and start from scratch, it will be way easier and the path on what to do will be much clearer. Get rid of everything and just start where the wires are coming out motor housing. It's fairly easy to find and buy switches and wiring that will compliment your that drill press.

PS> Looking at your pic, I would make a new cover face plate keeping the wires safe inside and use the two threaded holes to hold it place, I can see the previous owner is using one of the holes for the ground wire terminal, it's important to have the covered. The motor access box looks a little too small to also accommodate a on/off toggle switch and you many want to figure out a remote location for it which is done quite often to make it closer for you to reach while operating the DP.

Here are two that I've done recently, it's not the best look for your DP but you'll get the idea.

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silverchips said:
Not sure if this a good thing or not? Does the motor run smooth and quiet. If thats the case, congrats and great news.

I recommend just abandoning all the wire, connectors and switch and start from scratch, it will be way easier and the path on what to do will be much clearer. Get rid of everything and just start where the wires are coming out motor housing. It's fairly easy to find and buy switches and wiring that will compliment your that drill press.
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Yessir, smooth as silk, actually better than before (or its just my imagination). Your suggestion is maybe a little more than I feel comfortable doing. I realize the wiring from the motor is set up for either 110 or 220, but even with the diagram on the cover plate I don't know how to tell each. It did have a light wired in to the off/on switch that I got rid of. I cut new ends on the wires and replaced the connectors before closing it up. Wish I knew how to show you guys a video showing how smooth (abslutely no run out) and quiet this this is.
Now I'll figure out how to clean and tune up the foot feed.l
 
If you look closely you'll see that the wire jackets have a color to them or a tracer colored on the jacket. Also, there should be two wires with a number on them (#1 or #2), either with a small aluminum tag or similar or its painted on it in a very small font. Age does not do the wire colors any favors and the wires probably need a good cleaning to see the color. Just follow the diagram on the cover and you should be good.

You'll be surprised how easy to it, if you give a good think and look at the diagrams.

If you're not going to abandon the existing wires and switch (which makes things much harder), then for right now I would bypass the light, keep it simple, see how things work and then at a later date you can wire up the lamp up. I also question that push in power switch.

You have a beautiful period drill press and should try to keep it that way and original. The ones above that I did were altered and no longer original looking but gives you an idea of what can happen and now more functional and ergonomic.

Walker Turner made an orig. on/off switch box that would work well if you can find one of them.
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Yessir, the light is a separate animal now, not attached at all. I'm rewiring it right now, as it is a nice light, but seriously shows a poor repair at some point....it'll clean up nice. I tried for quite a while to get an original WT switch, but they are stupid expensive. Bet people selling stuff like that never turned an old machine on in their life. Anyway, the box is secure and the old girl is once more spinning. If I do ever run acros a off/on switch I will get it. She deserves it. Only other "nice to have" is a table raising mechanism, and the ships wheel ! Not gonna happen today, but it will sometime!
 
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