xaak,
It's simple, really.
All you really need is a signal generator, and a way to amplify the signal to deliver 120 volts. Actually, between 60v and 130v is better because you can tune the voltage to provide adequate drive at the lowest motor vibration possible.
Keep in mind, this is for 120v synchronous motors only.
The signal generator is the easy part. You need to find one that provides adequate granularity so that small adjustments to the output frequency are possible, and it must output sine wave. I have an old Leader signal generator that works OK for now.
The trickier part is amplifying the output of the signal generator so that it can output up to 130v @ roughly 10w (vpi motor needs 7.5 I think). For this, I used a Kicker IX500.4 car stereo amp I had laying around and an old 15v laptop power supply (I never throw anything out :) ). This easily allowed ouput in the range of I was looking for, to output 12w, a safety margin over the 7.5 needed for the motor.
So now I had to turn 5 to 7 volts into 120v. Looking at my parts drawers, I found a 6V center tapped line transformer, which normally turns 120v into 6v. Reversing it and driving the secondary with 6v (not using the center tap), it turns 6v into around 120v. Then I hooked the primary to a standard wall receptacle, and plugged the motor into the wall receptacle,
With the gain on the signal generator set to 0 and frequency set to 60hz, and the gain on the amp set to maybe 20%, I slowly increased the gain on the signal generator, while monitoring the voltage on a true RMS multi-meter until the platter started spinning. It took a minimum of 75 volts to start the platter, and once started, it would maintain speed at anything over 60v.
There you have it.
It's simple, really.
All you really need is a signal generator, and a way to amplify the signal to deliver 120 volts. Actually, between 60v and 130v is better because you can tune the voltage to provide adequate drive at the lowest motor vibration possible.
Keep in mind, this is for 120v synchronous motors only.
The signal generator is the easy part. You need to find one that provides adequate granularity so that small adjustments to the output frequency are possible, and it must output sine wave. I have an old Leader signal generator that works OK for now.
The trickier part is amplifying the output of the signal generator so that it can output up to 130v @ roughly 10w (vpi motor needs 7.5 I think). For this, I used a Kicker IX500.4 car stereo amp I had laying around and an old 15v laptop power supply (I never throw anything out :) ). This easily allowed ouput in the range of I was looking for, to output 12w, a safety margin over the 7.5 needed for the motor.
So now I had to turn 5 to 7 volts into 120v. Looking at my parts drawers, I found a 6V center tapped line transformer, which normally turns 120v into 6v. Reversing it and driving the secondary with 6v (not using the center tap), it turns 6v into around 120v. Then I hooked the primary to a standard wall receptacle, and plugged the motor into the wall receptacle,
With the gain on the signal generator set to 0 and frequency set to 60hz, and the gain on the amp set to maybe 20%, I slowly increased the gain on the signal generator, while monitoring the voltage on a true RMS multi-meter until the platter started spinning. It took a minimum of 75 volts to start the platter, and once started, it would maintain speed at anything over 60v.
There you have it.