Hard to say exactly. But it looks like you have a reversable DC or univeral type motor. two of the wires run the field coils(the stationalry ones on the outer part)Two of them will go to the bruches. and it also looks like it may have some sort of speed sensor on the end.

Try putting the field and brush wires in series. That should spin it up. but if its a DC only it may not run very well on AC that way. To reverse it just reverse the connections one either the field or the armature.

Can you give us a model of the wash machine? Perhaps some one here has actual schematica or hands onexperiance with it. then they can tell you exactly what you have and how to hook it up.

maybe is an AC motor and the other wiring is from the starting capacitor
just a guess...

Nope! Take a look at the pictures closer. I see a commutator and a set of brush holders! dont you?

That would work but I think it will be cheaper and more efficient just to buy a 12V motor.

Are you sure it's parallel wound? Most motors like this tend to be series wound.

You can power it directly from DC, in fact it will be more efficient run from DC than. It won't be very fast off 12V though. If you want to power it from DC, use a lower voltage than 230V, due to the fact that the winding inductance won't limit the current. As a guess, running it from 48VDC will probably give you similar performance to the mains.

You would need one hell of a potentiometer to vary the voltage to that thing!

I would go with the connection that you have in the second post. And like they said try it at a lower voltage first.
As far as AC or DC series wound universal motors generealy dont have any change in efficiency from one to the other. AC does tend to give some a hum or growl when under load. But at the same input voltage there is no real measurable difference.

Does a power drill or any other device with a universal motor have any speed or power difference between AC or DC input?

In a mass production level like a wash machine they may have went with a simple phase control circuit to varry the speed.
But I am just guessing.

Originally Posted by tcmtech

As far as AC or DC series wound universal motors generealy dont have any change in efficiency from one to the other. AC does tend to give some a hum or growl when under load. But at the same input voltage there is no real measurable difference.

When run from DC there are less losses because the current doesn't reverse there will be no hysteresis losses in the field coils and the eddy loss will also be lower.

Originally Posted by duffy

CAREFUL WITH THE SERIES WOUND MOTOR - they tend to speed up and blow themselves to hell if you run them unloaded.

I found that out for my self by removing the fan from a series wound vacuum cleaner motor. Luckily the motor wasn't too badly damaged, just one of the brushes suffered a bit of wear.

My experience is they are usually parallel wound. Could it be they are series for 220V and parallel for 110V?

That may be true.
It probably also depends on the appliance, I'd imagine electric drills to be parallel as they're often operated unloaded. I assumed a washing machine would be series because it's always loaded but I'm obviously wrong.

Hero999, do you have a formula for relating the DC equivalent voltage of a universal motor to the AC rating? I looked around, couldn't find one, be a handy thing to know.

No, I just discovered I could power a 230V vacuum cleaner motor well off 48V, actually it was probably closer to 56V and it might not have been running at full power.

I'll have a play around if I ever manage to get hold of a load of SLAs to connect up in series. I was at work when I did this last.

This kind of thing could be handy for example if you want to use power tools in a damp environment, to eliminate the dangers associated with mains, you could stick DC connectors on them and run them from batteries or a DC PSU in a safe location.