I’ve continued to do research and testing on my dome drive system, and it does look like I need to change the motor out for something with a bit more humph.

It seem that a few people are happy with driving the recommended GM9413 Pittman motor at 24V instead of 12V with good results, but I really want to avoid introducing the complexity of 24V into my system just for one motor. It will complicate charging the batteries at best and the shorten the system run time between charges, and at worse reduce the overall battery life unnecessarily.

In the last day or so I’ve got a lot of great advice from fellow builders, including a lot of links that helped me decide which new motor to go with. I wanted to stay with a Pittman if I could to hopefully avoid redesigning the dome drive system, and it looks like one of the variations of the Pittman GM9236 would work. It comes in a few different gearings and voltage ratings.

There was one specific 12V version I was shopping around for, the GM2936S018, which delivers about 3 times the torque, and about twice the RPMs of my current motor, but it was around $130, and I’d rather find something a little cheaper if I could. Then Bob pointed me at another GM9236 model that was very similar, but only $23 at a surplus store. They’re used/surplus but probably worth the risk so I ordered one to try. It has very similar specs delivering a lot more torque and hopefully went it’s installed, spin the dome a little faster 🙂

So here’s the links I used for my research and where to find motors

• Pittman website – not very good if want to look up older models, and you need to register to download specs.
• Skycraft Surplus – carries a lot of surplus motors, and right now has the GM9236 in stock.
• Skycraft’s Pittman Motor Guide
• Click Automation’s Pittman Spec and Price List– good overview and side by side comparison of a lot of the Pittman’s out there.