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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.9.37] on Sunday, October 28, 2012 at 16:14:13 :
In Reply to: OT: PTO Generator No Output posted by Steve [75.27.148.143] on Saturday, October 27, 2012 at 23:08:12 :
I don't know where you read that pushme-pullyou drill gimmick but there's no way it could work. I'm sure the machine is still good and there's some simple thing that would fix it, but I can't describe it all in words long-distance. Have you got a friend who truly understands electricity and machinery (not a "maybe I'll try this" guy) who can figure it out for you? There are two many things that it "could be". It could also be that it has electronics (e.g. transistorized stuff) in it, and that got fried by some misguided attempt to "re-energize" it.
In the old days, they had a separate exciter with a commutator that made DC that then went back into the rotating field via slip rings. You could easily measure the field voltage that way. The exciter's field depended on residual magnetism in the iron to start up, and that's what you would "flash", not the main field, to get it going. These days, they usually have a rectifier assembly mounted on the rotor that turns the output of the exciter into DC to fire the main field. That means you can't probe it. Those sorts don't even have brushes, though, so I'm not sure what the brushes are in your unit.
In any case it's too much to talk through remotely. My advice is find a friend nearby who's good with that sort of thing and get him to figure it out. The risk of "shotgunning" it is you'll fry something expensive by the time you've gone through all the random advice you get here and there (including YouTube). If you really want to fix it yourself, you need to take the time to understand how it's supposed to work, just like you would when rebuilding an engine or something. That means understanding what each part's called and what it does, and knowing what you're really measuring when you use a volt, ohm, or amp meter to measure something. A generator is truly a simple machine, but it's different from an engine and much of its operation depends on things you can't see (electricity and magnetism) but must measure with instruments.
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