Lathes.....is there an affordable All-In-One solution for beginners?

[XXWoodmanXX]

I recently won a huge lot of motors on Ebay. Now, I must say, some are very, VERY nice, and some, not so nice. Frankly, some of these comms would have most of you tuning entheusiats screaming like a little girl at a horror movie. LOL

My question is, with all these motor tuning/trueing products out there, is there an all-in-one station that will allow me to lathe not only the comm, but balance the arm, and do.......I dunno.....whatever else I need to do to prolong the life of my motors?

[gizmoguy303]

I don't think buying a balancer would be cost-effective.

The only thing you need is a good pit lathe. Cobra makes a cheap one with a diamond bit for like $170, www.towerhobbies.com. Or get a HUDY with the diamond bit, one of the best lathes out there besides the Fantom lathe which is $400.

[highroller]

Most lathes also require a slave motor, stock 27 which sometimes turns a little too fast with 5volts or more. Some will either use an old modified motor install a stock armature set timing to zero, use a slave motor that's between 30-55turns or use an adjustable power supply to reduce the rotational speed. Most armatures are already balanced, about the only time you need to rebalanced one is when you rewind it again with new wire or take off some of the turns.
For that you can use a prop balancer that's been modified to balance an armature but it not as accurate as the balancer used by motor builders.
It would depend how old the motors are, the condition they are in as to how much time and effort I would put into them. For competitive racing I usually buy fresh new motors - it seems to me after 3-5 month of hard racing no matter what is done to motor it drops power - a very few do continue to run great.