We showed you a pair of his creations earlier this week , which you might recall. As luck would have it, the motor on the baby swing he modified burned out shortly after we featured his hack. He luckily stumbled upon a forum thread that said a motor from a cheap air freshener was a perfect match, so he gave it a shot. Sure enough, it was the same motor, but with more torque.
I can think of a lot of places where to find those motors. Probably the easiest is inside old cdrom drives. I can guess why it burned out. A 7-year-old baby must weigh like 50 pounds or so.
It amazes me sometimes that these simple fixes are there for the hacking. You just need to not be lazy and get up and do it. He hacked the swing to defeat the time-limited shutoff and shortly afterwards the motor burned out. Sam β Safe bet that rigging it to run continuously was the last straw on the old motor.
But if the new motor does have more torque it should sustain continuous operation with the same load better than the old motor. I was really surprised that the motor from an air freshener would even be powerful enough to run something like this. The newer swings are only cosmetically different. This is the same as with a lot of their baby stuff jumpers, seats, etc. The air freshener canisters require a fair bit of pressure to run, and the swings require a good push each swing.
Torque increases by the inverse ratio that the rotation is geared down. Like anything out there different performance motors in the same package from the same manufacturer. If the baby is in the swing all day I am surprised CPS has not been called. Once you start to see the prices some manufacturers charge for stupid proprietary things in the industrial parts industry⦠you never stop cringing.
