Invacare wheelchair motor
 

Our team had a power wheel chair donated last year. We would like to use it as a chassis for a t shirt cannon. the chair has 2 invacare hub motors that I am pretty sure are 24 volt.
Part # 1079291

we have tried to run it hooking two 12 volt batteries in series to make 24 volt, but it just jerks.

Re: Invacare wheelchair motor
 

They usually also have an electric brake built into the motor that needs to be energized to release. Make sure you are doing that as well.

Re: Invacare wheelchair motor
 

If you don't need the brake, then that mechanism can be quite easily removed

Re: Invacare wheelchair motor
 

Do you know whether it's a brushless motor that requires a special controller?

Re: Invacare wheelchair motor
 

It has 3 leads red, black and blue. Then a separate grouping of 5 wires. I guess the 5 may be for built in positioning sensors.

Re: Invacare wheelchair motor
 

The motor is brushless. As Alan suggested it will require a special controller, and will definitely NOT run from a battery, dc supply, or one of the dc motor speed controllers used in FRC.

Re: Invacare wheelchair motor
 

That sounds like a brushless motor. You could buy a brushless ESC from a place like hobbyking for cheap, but I urge you to look for documentation first. There are several types of brushless motors, and I wouldn't know what those 5 extra wires are for.

Re: Invacare wheelchair motor
 

If I had to guess, I'd say that the extra wires are for some sort of sensor feedback - likely encoder data, current sensing, or something similar. I suppose there's also a small chance that there's an ESC built into the motor itself, and those wires are for the signal data. In other words, I've got absolutely no idea, and this is a case where documentation is a must :).