I found this very early Bipolar Electric Motor (circa 1800s) at an estate sale last week. It was in poor condition and non-working, but still an amazing find. Since I love vintage technology, and am especially fascinated with electric motors, I decided to restore this piece of history to working condition.
I started by disassembling the motor and soaking the cast-iron parts in Evapo-Rust for a couple days to remove the rust. Afterwards, I painted the iron black to restore the original color. The gaskets that separate the coils and the base were made of paper and were disintegrating into powder, so I cut replacement gaskets out of rubber. Next, I turned my attention to the bottom coils. The original coils were cotton sheathed copper wire with paper dividers, and both the sheathing and dividers were badly deteriorated. I rewound the bottom coils using enameled copper wire, and I used electrical tape to divide the layers. This was a tedious process, but I just listened to an audiobook about Nikola Tesla while I worked, and the time flew by. I noticed that a couple of brass screws were missing, but I found matching screws in my hardware collection and just had to cut them down. Lastly, I oiled the armature and tried running power to it using my bench power supply (30v). You can see the result in the video below.
