# Doubts about apprenticing as a motor winder



## Wardenclyffe (Jan 11, 2019)

Grass is always Greener, Foundry work is rewarding also,...


----------



## Service Call (Jul 9, 2011)

You’re new, no experience. They are going to put you where you can do the least damage, until you show them otherwise. Everyone starts at the bottom[emoji51]


----------



## Coppersmith (Aug 11, 2017)

Wear gloves


----------



## micromind (Aug 11, 2007)

Your hands will toughen up with time and as noted above, no one starts at the top. 

You may not realize it but work in general and electrical in specific is more of a journey than a destination. You're picking up skills that will serve you for your entire career. 

Winding motors is a step, eventually something more suitable will present itself.


----------



## paulengr (Oct 8, 2017)

Coppersmith said:


> Wear gloves


Not a good idea.


----------



## paulengr (Oct 8, 2017)

A couple things about working in a motor shop.

To begin with how many people in the shop actually have any electrical experience at all? In most motor shops the answer is one or two. That will be the test panel operator and the engineer. They will have an engineer in the larger shops. That’s it. Everyone else is effectively a mechanic.

Second wonder takes a special personality like machinists. Might not be for you long term.

It takes about a year to know just about everything there is to know about motors from the shop perspective. But 99% of the electrical people have no clue. That gives you an edge. Stick it out for a few months. It is all knowledge that is NOT in books.

If they have a field service crew, go there. If there isn’t get it started. Field service techs, at least the good ones, do essentially everything the other trades don’t do. When the industrial crews get stuck troubleshooting they call the motor shop. You get to do vibration, alignments, balancing, infrared on the mechanical side. Then starters, drives, soft starts, both low voltage and medium voltage on the electrical side. Plus breakers, transformers, including generators.!Lots of exotic and/or ancient equipment. It pushes your skills and knowledge to the limit regardless of your training or background. You will be a better engineer, mechanic, or electrician than any others around. They always call because it’s “the motor”. It’s usually not. You can easily turn that side of the business into anything you want it to be. There is so much money in motors and they are high maintenance compared to other electrical equipment you will always be where the action is.

As an example of the crazy stuff not too long ago the company that makes most of the transmissions for Toyota kept burning up 300+ HP motors on screw air compressors. They did basically everything to this machine. I measured about a 10% current unbalance but it was wye delta starting. The guy there got crazy readings when for instance he put an amp clamp on both leads but had one reverse polarity. So fixing those issues it became obvious the voltage unbalance was at the contactors. Opened them up and found worn out contact tips was the culprit, NOT the compressor, alignment, etc., etc.


----------



## Coppersmith (Aug 11, 2017)

paulengr said:


> Not a good idea.


Why?


----------



## paulengr (Oct 8, 2017)

Coppersmith said:


> Why?


Need the dexterity and feel. We’ve tried it because the job is highly injury prone. It just increased error rates.


----------



## splatz (May 23, 2015)

Elektrik_86 said:


> It seems like the majority of the time is spent placing the new coils back into the stator. I find it to be tough on the hands as it takes quite a bit of effort to maneuver the coils into the stair slots. I found that my hands and arms get pretty cut up from this. It's definitely not the most physically demanding job ever, but I fear that over the years issues such as carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis are very likely


I know something that will help, there's an extra sensitive formulation now


----------



## paulengr (Oct 8, 2017)

Coppersmith said:


> Why?


Need the dexterity and feel. We’ve tried it because the job is highly injury prone. It just increased error rates.


----------



## gpop (May 14, 2018)

I remember them old days when manual work hurt my hands.
Over the years i simply smashed, burnt, crushed and cut my hands until i had damaged all of the nerves. Now i don't have to worry about carpet tunnel or anything like that as i can hardly feel a thing.


----------



## Southeast Power (Jan 18, 2009)

Learn everything you can and then look for a sales position within the company.


----------



## brian john (Mar 11, 2007)

With your background, stick this out for a year or two, that should open up many opportunities in that field.


----------



## John Valdes (May 17, 2007)

I ran a motor shop for almost a year but worked for them for almost 7 years.
The motor shop is much different than anything an electrician does. Your job is called a "winder". 
In my shop we had mechanics, winders, single phase techs and support help like drivers and shop guys.
The winders in my shop only wound motors. Nothing else and none knew anything about what happens to the motors once they leave. The winders and single phase guys were the top feeders, but clearly not electricians or even electricians helpers. Not even close.

Today motors are not always wound. New motors in many cases are replaceable and cheaper than winding. You IMO are in a dying trade. There will always be some need. But not like it has been in the past.
If you want to become an electrician, you will not become one in a motor shop. 
Also you most likely will have a shop foreman who designs motor windings. This part is his job.
Most all motors can be referenced for winding data, so the need to design is also a dying task.

Motor shops are not the training ground for electricians. You would serve yourself to find work more closely related to this trade. You will go nowhere in a motor shop.
When I got the job, I already had a license and many years of experience. This is why I was hired. There was no one in the shop with experience anywhere but the motor shop.


----------



## paulengr (Oct 8, 2017)

John Valdes said:


> I ran a motor shop for almost a year but worked for them for almost 7 years.
> The motor shop is much different than anything an electrician does. Your job is called a "winder".
> In my shop we had mechanics, winders, single phase techs and support help like drivers and shop guys.
> The winders in my shop only wound motors. Nothing else and none knew anything about what happens to the motors once they leave. The winders and single phase guys were the top feeders, but clearly not electricians or even electricians helpers. Not even close.
> ...


Partly agree here.

As far as dying art motors over 25-50 HP are still hand wound. Always will be. The volume and other things just aren’t there to automate or we would do it. When I say “wound” that includes form wound coils. The trend that does exist is go big or go home. The larger regional shops that have always done the specialty work that have large VPI tanks, clean rooms, dynos, and large test panels not only exist but flourish. The local guy that does stuff say 250 HP and less is losing the small market to mass production and the large market to increasingly higher quality standards.

Motors today are computer designed. Changing specs like rewinding or rerating never was very common. The fee to the specialty companies that do it is a few hundred dollars where the software is thousands so no justification in doing it but somebody still has to manage it and know what’s possible and what isn’t...napkin math and rules of thumb stuff. We keep carcasses on hand for these jobs and just rewind as needed to customer specs. Sure you don’t do a bunch of trial and error and truly “design” it anymore but the job did not go away.

I should have said almost nobody outside motor shops has motor shop skill sets coming in and vice versa. And yes it’s all inside non-field work. The same “not really electrical” issue exists at ALL manufacturing plants. Motors, transformers, insulators, LEDs, satellite dishes...all similar.

I also was not suggesting the winder job as the only job in a motor shop, far from it. They are put up on a pedestal but for someone more versatile that doesn’t love highly repetitive work, not the place to be long term. But the knowledge about motors outside motor shops is downright primitive. It’s a huge edge to know motors well.


----------



## John Valdes (May 17, 2007)

Motors 25-50 hp are still wound? I know one shop that farms out anything under 100 hp. Who is rewinding when a new motor is less money. Why would anyone pay for a rewind when they can get a new motor for less?
The only motors being rewound are specials, large frames and some DC. If its economical, customers always go for new.
By the time you bring the motor in, write it up, test it, call the customer with a rewind price, you could have had a new one sent to them. Quotes cost money in this business and any shop quoting everything that walks in the door is not going to be around much longer.
Not to mention good shops do mechanical checks like bearing tolerances. This is not free.

Some small shops may be able to get away with winding everything that comes in the door. Most shops could not exist charging for rewinds when a new motor is less money.

Don't get me wrong. Motor shops have their place. But that is dying and only the very strong will survive. And in the case of the shop I worked for, 60% of the motors that came in got replaced, not rewound.
I would imagine that number is much higher now.

What I failed to mention to the OP is motor control. Should he take that path, he very well could make something here.
But in my case I came to the motor shop with that experience. I highly doubt I take that path had a started in the motor shop. I learned that in manufacturing plants. The customer of the motor shop.


----------

