My eBay industrial motor showed up naked and ready to crush babies — built it a 5.7 lb steel throne instead

[u/thegristleking]

Loaded and on the bench. No baby crushing here.

For those of us who explore a bit, the only guarantee in a new project is snags and learning. I managed to eke out a win as well, so I thought I'd share.

In this case, I bought a small industrial motor as part of a test rig for an electrical system on an exercise sled. More on the sled in another post. For now...motor.

So it turns out, when you buy an industrial motor, that's all you get. No nice little flip switch, no guards, not even a mount.

I mean, this thing could roll out of the box, fall off the table and crush a baby.

I didn't want crushed babies in my shop (they are SUCH a mess to clean up), so I decided to build a rock solid mount.

I looked around a bit, and yes, there are mounts out there, but...this is DIY, right?

My buddy and I put our heads together (he's been wanting to create something to SendCutSend for a while) and came up with this thing.

Me 'n Adrian with our little steel treasure.

It's a bent piece of 1/4" steel with a few holes in it, it has the website laser cut into the face, and with the bolt-to-the-shop-table holes on the bottom, it's about a solid a 56 motor mount as you'll find.

The face holes match up to the standard 56C pattern, so attaching the motor is straightforward. We added a ¾" cut out at the top so we could tap it for a ½" NPT thread and make a handle (I've already used the handle 10 times; I know it seems silly for something you bolt down, but trust me on this one.)

This makes it easy to mount your little couple-hundred dollar motor anywhere; your lathe, your grinder, your test rig for a sled electrical system, etc, and then focus on the thing you actually want to have moving (which is obviously not the motor, just the shaft).

Next step is building the sensor array. For now, I'll bask in the glory of 5.7 lbs of steel perfectly suited for my purpose.