Making use of a treadmill

Thread Starter

Harris

Joined Jan 26, 2011
2
I have a Proforum Treadmill with a shot control panel. I am attempting to by pass the eletronic controls and get the motor working and have a working treadmill without out all the extras. I will be using it for my dogs and I don't think they will mind it they are not in the target heart range. It is powered by a 130v DC motor. There are two blue wires going to the inside of the motor and it runs to the power switch. There is one red wire and one black wire which is connected to the circuit board. It seems like all of the wires are hot because I tested it to a ground. ( ther are few wires attatched to the frame). The motor does work as I hooked it up to a 12v source but does not run properly due to the lack of voltage. If I can get it running it would be a success.
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
A full-wave bridge rectifier would give you plenty of DC juice, but I think that direct approach is frowned upon here, for safety reasons. I think it would also spin the motor far too quickly. The motor speed is possibly under PWM control and the proper speed may be a low duty cycle pulse, not 100% duty.
 

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
A full-wave bridge rectifier would give you plenty of DC juice, but I think that direct approach is frowned upon here, for safety reasons. I
It certainly is, as it is lethally dangerous. Plus the output would be uncontrolled at 175 volts - not healthy for the motor.
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
The motor does work as I hooked it up to a 12v source but does not run properly due to the lack of voltage.
A simple and possibly successful approach might start by determining what steady DC voltage runs the motor properly. If you've got several 12v sources, you could try 24v, 36v, etc. My hunch is that it'll run fine at far less than the rated voltage. If so, you could power it with a simple DC power supply; transformer (gives isolation and safety)+rectifier+capacitor filter. The difficulty could be the current required being fairly high, and thus the transformer being somewhat costly. Can you tell how much current the motor draws?

The lower-voltage approach will not work well with all DC motors. If it really needs the higher voltage, but runs far too fast at that voltage, you'll need to learn about DC-motor control circuits. Basically it may need a lower duty cycle square wave. The high voltage period gives the torque the motor needs to move properly but the zero voltage period reduces the speed.
 

Thread Starter

Harris

Joined Jan 26, 2011
2
solution did the trick. I simply put two battery chargers in series along with a battery from a car. The smaller amp chargers did not work so I had to put in a car battery. I still need more voltage as the tradmill works well with the smaller dogs but the heavier dogs runs kind of slow. What can I use for more dc voltage. It is kind of a mess running 2 chargers and a batter in series and would be neater to have just one easy source. I tried to find a transformer but all were out of my price range.

Thanks for the advice, it was very helpful.
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
So you need something like 30v-60v DC, give or take, of you are going to provide a completely new, straight-DC supply.

But if the treadmill's power supply and motor are both working (true?), maybe there's a way to link the two and just bypass the control board. Can you post pictures of the power supply? Maybe somebody here will have some ideas. Sounds like just two power/speed levels might be all you need?
 
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