What Does That Treadmill Motor Coil Do?
Author:
Badmin
After my treadmill motor conversion video, a few people asked about the coil-shaped component wired into the speed controller — is it a transformer, and do you actually need it? It's an inductor (also called a choke), and after running the motor through a handful of speed-change and load tests with and without it wired in, the difference was obvious: with the inductor, the motor settles into a new speed smoothly, and without it, you get a couple of audible surges and oscillations before it evens out. So it's not strictly required, but it makes the motor noticeably smoother, and I'm keeping mine in the circuit.