Century M-5 Frame Motor

[uvcrep]

I recently built a device using an old Century M-5 Frame Motor. The thing still runs nice and smooth. It's 1/6 HP even though it's about as big a table saw motor. It has a place to oil it on the top of each bearing and also what appears to be a place on the bottom of each. The lower ones come out the side then make a 90 degree turn upward. Both upper and lower have spring caps on them. The lower ones almost look like they could be an oil level indicator. Is that what the lower ones are? I don't want to start start pouring in oil and hope that it will show if that's not right. The patent dates on this thing is 1914 and 1915 so I'm not kidding when I said it was old. Any advice would be appreciated.

[HayZee518]

An old motor like that has oil rings in each end bell. They are steel or brass rings that are allowed to rotate freely. the bearing itself is sintered bronze with a slot for the ring to pick up and distribute oil. You add oil initially through the top oiler and watch the lower opening until you see oil, then STOP! The bottom part acts as a reservoir for oil.
a medium grade oil, non detergent works best. Mobil oil lists it as DTE medium

[Speedbump]

I'm not up on motors that old, but a lot of the motors of that type from the 60's and up had what were called bushings instead of bearings. They were like Hayzee described, but had felt in the housing to hold the oil. It only took a few drops every now and then to keep them lubed. Once they wore out, it was pretty much a throw away, because even though the bushings were readily available, they didn't fit the shaft real well since it also had some wear.

[HayZee518]

Many of the real early motors had a wound rotor before they came up with a slot type rotor. These were called attraction/repulsion type of motors. Power was fed to the conventional stator as in single phase and three phase. One end bell had a brush rigging and brushes that contacted the rotor commutator. By positioning the brushes around the rotor you could increase speed by varying the magnetic zero and also reverse the direction of the motor. 240 volts was common with these attraction/repulsion motors. One end bell had an open frame construction to access the brushes.

[uvcrep]

Thanks, that answers my question. Appreciate the help. By the way this motor does say Repulsion Start on it

[HayZee518]

there ya go!