It turns out my motors were no longer in plane, and I think that was causing most of my binding issues. I can get it back, but between the vibration and torque, they pull themselves out of true pretty quickly. Before even finishing a test routine.
Are there motor mounts that have simple holes instead of slots? So once it was screwed in it would stay in place. I saw someone drew up some interesting looking mounts in the community garden, but they don’t seem to be manufactured.
the problem with those $50 motor mounts is they needed to be bent which made the price too high ( the motor mounts from china are $1 each)
One can get around this by making a series of perforations, then the metal can be bent using a vice and hammer or vice and 2x4 as a torque arm.
I can send you a DXF file of this if you want to try it out
you can email it to
my guess is two of them will cost around $20
I think the reason the orginal ones were bent is because some people wanted to be able to take them on and off the machine. if you will always just leave them on the machine, bending it is not really necessary just get it made out of 1/8" steel metal and it should be strong enough.
I drilled a two additional holes. Once I got the mount in position with the slots I drove two screws through those holes. The holes are the diameter of the screws so it can’t shift now.
We cut a plate that mounts to the front of the top beam. The L bracket for the motor is mounted so that the vertical face of the L (which holds the motor) is flush with the front of the beam. The plate we made is about 100mm tall, and is screwed to the front of the beam. About 70mm is on the beam and about 30mm covers part of the front of the L bracket. The top of the plate is cut to go around the motor output shaft and sprocket, and two holes are drilled to match the lower two screw holes that hold the motor.
Thanks all. I took the bracket off and used a drill press to add two more holes. Going to see how much it helps in the next day or so. If that fails, I like the idea of a front-mounted bracket like ame mentioned.
