Electric winch?

I'll be interested to see if this works. It makes some sense since elctric motors have all their torque at 1rpm and loose torque as the speed increases. Also 1 horsepower electric is about the same as 3 horsepower gas. Its hard to compare gas and electric because torque and rpms are what really matter. As to whether batteries will work, I see lots of golf carts, wheel chairs and fat people scooters that seem to do pretty good for pretty long. Those things run on car batteries or something close and must loose way more than 90percent of their charge.

Skol for trying new shit and screw the haters. Good thing that glen plake or the wright brothers did not come here and ask for advice. we'd still be on horses and skiing 220's in tights.
 
thats because they run on what is known as a deep-cycle battery(s), they are very different then car batteries and much more expensive
 
In this thread-

OP who has a cool idea and asks for advice

Clueless people bashing OP

OP and few others fend for themselves

Clueless people start throwing out false data to OP

my face when "electric motors need more maintenance and dont do well in the low end"-

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OP, i love the idea and cant wait too see how you go about building it. Dont listen to people bashing you in the thread because they have no idea what they are talking about.

Youre going to havta search for the right kind of motor for this project (keep in mind that gas motor HP =/= electric motor HP)be sure you compare the motors nameplate (the thing riveted on it with all the information) and the battery outputs.

 
Monkatizer - seems like you know something about this stuff. too bad you cant offer up what you know without being such a dick.
 
stop calling me out n00b. i offered him help that took me time to type with the intention of helping him, he proceeded to ignore my help and act as if i hadn't even said anything. at that point, yes i get mad and may come off as a dick but that's because i care enough to want him to not mess it up.
 
your first words were....... if you had to make this thread, i doubt your winch will work and in your second you call this bro asking for help an idiot.

just sayin
 
Electric. And thank you stevets and the other guy who posted the .gifI've checked out boodog and their pictures all have no motor showing, its pretty much 25 pictures of the same thing or at least thats all I could find. And for the nameplate thing, the problem is these 2 motors don't have any.. Hahah kind of a fail, but they were free.
 
whoa bro, in my defense my point was that they're more expensive to maintain/operate (batteries, generator, etc). and as for the low end comment, i have no problem whatsoever being proven wrong and encouraged him with his project. no need to take it to the next level embedding gifs and shit.
 
I did a little research on this. You're right that they would be the way to go and I found some cheap on craigslist. Car batteries are not impossible, just extremely unethical because of the way that they drain really quickly once they lose a bit of power.
 
'Nother thing you will have to take into consideration which you might not have thought of is a speed controller, as running a 5-10hp electric motor as constant on or off isn't probably going to be very gentle on you.

You are also going to need an inverter if you're using something like a washing machine motor or whatever since those run off AC (ALternating current, I assume you know some of this through your uncle) and batteries are inherently DC.

What you might have success in is using a setup for something like an RC helicopter (Plenty of experience here, PM if you want some more info+Links) You can usually find something like a 7hp electric brushless motor, a speed controller and batteries made for each other. These things are made to fly hard as fuck and will easily put up with pulling you along if you gear them right. Batteries probaby last about 4-6 mins for hard flying-not too sure how this would translate to winch runs.

Good luck though, would be prety sick to have yourself an electric winch. Probably wouldn't piss off neighbours as much as a gas motor. And to electric motors having less low end than Gasmotors, electric motors actually have the most tourque when they aren't moving.
 
Thank you for the advice. The motor I have is a DC motor, but like I said it has no markings on it. Yesterday I went to my grandpa's house and we ran some tests. putting 12 volts to this motor should give us about 20 mph. There is the problem with the hard start, but I'll be getting a controller. Thats where the issue of the lack of markings comes in. What info do I need to buy a controller? And The batteries have been covered already. It just so happens there was a guy selling 2 almost brand new deep-cycle batteries on craigslist. He wanted $50 a peice (way less than they're worth) but I got them both for $80. Just out of curiosity, though, how much would an RC set up cost? With the motor, controller and batteries?
 
Good stuff on getting it sorted out, out of interest do you know the capacity on the batteries you got?

For speed controllers the only things you need to worry about are how much voltage you are putting though them (You seemed to have ascertained 12, so get a controller rated for such) and how many amps the motor is going to pull-this is where it might get tricky.

Since the motor will pull a certain amount of amps when it's under load (Ie. when it's pulling you), that current will have to go through the controller, you're probably going to have to test this yourself, but I'm sure there's a way to work out the amp draw of an electric motor under a set load. This is the most important part however, as the motor doesn't care if it's pulling more amperage than the controller (Or the batteries mind you) can handle. You basically want to build the system around what you're expecting of the motor.

The Rc setup will basically....cost a shit ton. Batteries are like $500 a piece, motors maybe 300, not sure on the speed controllers. (Expensive hobby)

Good luck, sounds like you have it fairly sorted, get some videos up if you can, would be interested to see the design of this.
 
Wish I would have seen this thread earlier. I got a tread mill that I took apart thinking I was going to do something along similar lines. The idea was to just take the motor, put a spool on it, and use the already programmed controls to operate it. Then I would just use the plug and either rob electricity with and extension cord or run it off my car.

it seems like a cheap way to do it because people just toss tread mills out all the time because they are fat, but I really haven't had time to actually build it, so I don't know how well it would work.

 
Go for it! The car thing would be a good test but if it works check out the electric wheelchairs/scooters on craigslist. like I said I got some really nice batteries for cheap. And I'm sure the controls on the treadmill would make it super simple but I'd also worry about a slow start since they take a while to get up to speed
 
12 volts 27 Amp hours is the capacity I believe.And by what I'm expecting out of the motor as in speed?Also thats a bummer about the RC helis because that seems like a really simple way to do it.I'll definitely be taking pictures and videos along the way
 
mr.jaggis: tell me what problems i will have with an electric winch

everyone else: ....

mr.jaggis: fuck you guys i know what im doing!
 
Sound like some pretty nice battteries for 80 dollars all up. By "what you're expecting out of the motor" what I mean is how many amps it will draw max while it is under the "load" of pulling you along.

 
Not sure, I guess you could try hooking the batteries directly up and putting the motor under some load, them measure the amp draw with a multimeter (10kgs of load, then multiply the amp draw to get your weight).

You could even get the setup done (Winch built), then drag along weights using just battery-motor connection and determine amp draw, then go from there. Probably want to get the amp draw, then say 10-20 percent more for the controller.
 
What is a recitifier? And I would give you the specs on the motor but there are none hahah. no markings anywhere on the thing inside or out.
Also just an update: We tried to do a test with just a spool on a shaft extension right from the motor, but it was not powerful enough with 12 volts. However there was a ton of friction because the rope would touch the motor and a very ghetto makeshift pillowblock type thing and that could have been a big part of the problem. But then we decided to try put 24 volts on it and the rope snapped! It was crazy. So right now we're working on a controller and throttle but its looking like gas would be the way to go. We're going to keep trying though because we still might be able to do it (with gearing amongst other things) and so far we have done it for extremely cheap considering the materials we need. The bummer about the electric motor is that you can't just go off of one variable like a gas motor. Horsepower is not the most important thing on electric, but it seems to be a big factor on gas motors.
 
so much misinformation in this thread.

Op im glad you stuck with electric, but not having markings is going to be a bit of a problem. If you are getting a speed controller id just buy a new motor and match them up. BUT really hard starts arent that bad on DC motors, id maybe just add a section of bungee to the handle to absorb some of the shock of startup. The deep cycle batteries should work great and last long (many charge cycles) wire them parallel and you'll be set, running 12v and double the amperage of one battery. It should run quite a while seeing as the motor will only run for the few seconds under heavy load while you are getting pulled then shut off. The main issue you will run into is a self starting self stopping mechanism (also a problem that iv run into in my planning) No clutch or transmission shouldn't be needed, but iv you decide to go that route a CVT would be a cheap and reliable system.

A car starter like what your grandpa used might not be such a bad rout to go with, high amperage and high tourgue and not meant to run for long. And they also engage and disengage with a solenoid. All you would need to do is get a machinist to make a gear that matches the starter gear and mate it to a pulley. you'd still need a start and stop mechanism, but when it starts the started would push its gear into the pulley, spin then disengage when the rope hits a stop mechanism
 
Awesome idea. make sure to post a build log.

plus electric is quieter so less chance of getting busted by the po...
 
Good idea, you can do this or you can just make sure you are far enough away from the winch so that when you release the rope it has enough room for it to shutdown and not get fucked up by the winch
 
You're right, there's so much bullshit in this thread... People shouldn't be giving other people advice when they don't have any knowledge on this subject at all.
 
So you think this would be good for testing purposes? or for the actual winch? It seems like it would make it much more complicated because then you need to find an outlet.
 
Holy wall of text. I'll try to respond to a lot of this info but sorry if I dont.
The spool hasn't been designed yet but we have some ideas.
Would you suggest trying to find the output and input? and would that information make is easier to find a more suitable controller?
We were planning on getting a throttle as well as a controller but we aren't sure yet what we're doing for that.And I'll make sure to have my grandpa check everything out. So far we have a really sketchy testing set up because we don't want to spend a ton more if it wont work, but for testing purposes it works fine. Right now we just need a controller to finish up the testing though and if it works we continue. If it doesnt, we build gas powered. Thank you for all the input
 
I'll take a picture soon but yesterday all our snow melted so we tested with a skateboard going up a mellow hill. Its the motor mounted on a milk crate (only for testing obviously) that has a shaft extension with a spool mounted on it. The crate is strapped around a tree to keep it from flying around and the batteries are in a box right next to the tree close enough that the wires coming from the motor can connect to the batteries.
 
Yes it did. the only problem with using a skateboard though is that its much harder to estimate speed (at least for me). As of now, we need about 50 -100 more feet of rope. Right now we have about a hundred give or take a few feet
 
did you end up going through with this? recently saw a video of an electric go kart hauling ASS and it sparked my interest on researching an electric winch a little further.
 
p.s. i should have done WAY more research before dogging electric motors. i was waaaay wrong about low end performance, as well as peak speed. foot in mouth.

i'm still trying to figure out how to lighten it up though, as the battery bank on my current sketch up is >100 lbs.
 
So why doesn't somebody just make a charging circuit with a decently high capacitance capacitor, then discharge the capacitor on a motor? That will release all of the energy very quickly, and if you find a balance between ripping your arms off and too slow it would be good. It could solve the space issue.

I'm not sure where you would find such a capacitor though, cause as far as I know they wouldn't sell such a thing a radio shack. I've only dealt with small circuit stuff or small things, and I can't recall how much energy is involved here...
 
>gets winch for christmas under the tree>accidently turns on and spins out the door dragging all the presents away

>the winch who stole christmas
 
mine works pretty well

we built this monster last summer out of an old powered bicycle trailer project.

it was fairly low cost, considering we used 90% recycled parts from my dad's contraption

it's super ghetto though. for example, the speed controller is zip tied on haha

The Stealth Winch





-48v (4 tractor batteries)

-3 HP electric Irrigation pump motor

-500' of 1000 lb test spectra line

-custom machined steel spool

-twist grip potentiometer with 48v controller

-Pillow blocks for bearings

- old steel pipe for driveshaft

- angle iron for frame

588910.jpeg

ill have a video up soon

 
dont need one with electic since there's no idle. just a variable speed potentiometer (twist grip throttle)

we do have to turn the main power switch off to pay out the rope though. unless we want to work really hard and charge the batteries haha.

 
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