Electric Motor Brands

Do you feel you know less now than you did before? LMAO

At least we all agree that geaseable ball bearings are tops on our list.

Could be why different brands work best in on place and not another is the humidity they work in. Here in AZ where it's dry we don't see alot of large motor failures other than just being worn out.With that being said, Emmerson and Marthon both in the 3/4hp class work and last well in swamp coolers, copper wound. Not the same class motor as the 5hp your after but they work well in high humidity.

Good luck in your hunt!

Have you ran accross a supplier just for cast iron tables? Not the complete saw.

T_Bone

Not much consensus on this one, eh? My experience with motors is they all last practically forever. Only ones I've had to replace were older than I am- but maybe not as old as you. Looks like I'll be buying on price (lowest).

I used to be able to pick up rejected castings from the Rockwell foundry in Ohio. But that's been a lot of years. Still have a couple of tools manufactured by guys who took the rejected-and broken- castings, repaired them and put together decent tools. My wood lathe's withstood a lot of vibration without failure. Wish I could weld that well.

A friend picked up an immense saw with tilting top at an auction years ago. Not worth much to him now that he's used to a unisaw, but it'd be a small fortune to ship to the desert. Don't forget, you also need the trunnion. That's the only way I know to get a top anymore. My 12-14" Rockwell only cost me $350 at auction due to its being 3 phase. And that saw you can bolt most any motor to, unlike the unisaw. Now that I think about it, you weld well enough to make a unisaw mount out of a std motor (not something I'd try) which gives you a possibility of picking up a 3 phase unisaw cheap. Those motors run around $400.

Your problem, obviously, is your location for finding auctions with 3 phase tools. Gotta hit the road for that. Ohio has the best auctions to my experience.

I never really had a problem with any brand but the Baldor usually had oiled bearings that I like. I don't like sealed bearings. Emmerson is another good brand. If there boxed when received besure to check endplay and bearing spin. If a motor was bad it usually had a problem out of the box, misalign bearing, missing cap, etc. but not very often.

T_Bone

Much the same with GE's even though I have not seen one of these get the partly submerged test...yet. Many of these around for lots of years still chugging away day after day in all sorts of applications.

Baldor is so-so in my book. Some seem to last forever and some die rather quickly with no good reason. One plant I frequently do work at had many of these with an excellent dedicated PM department yet many failures on them led to replacement with Leeson and GE's.

Mitsubishi also builds some great motors however they are hard to come by and even harder to get parts for. Hold up very well and I'd place them one step above both Leeson and GE for user friendliness and durability in the 1725 and 3450 rpm ranges.

Reliant has to be my first choice in DC drives. Westinghouse are right up there with GE for multi-use applications and durability. Century and Marthon are cheap throw-away's in the same class as Dayton. Magnatek's are ok from what I've seen in my limited exposure to them.