Do single phase induction motors have a preferred stopping position?

[e100]

As in you cut the power and wait for it to stop. Is the rotor likely to end up in a particular angular orientation or is the final resting position totally random?

[xavier60]

I'd say random, assuming there is no stator current flow. Except maybe for some mechanical reason such as rotor imbalance.

[Ian.M]

It would depend on the type of motor.  Assuming we are discussing the common squirrel cage motor, its possible that residual magnetization could affect the stopping position as there's typically enough for the motor to self-excite if spun up as a generator with a resonant load but IMHO its rather unlikely as  there are several design factors that are often used to minimize cogging when running that would also do so when stopped, including skewed bars, and a preference for a rotor with an odd number of slots, which as the number of poles is always even, prevents more than one bar crossing a pole edge at the same time.

[bsdphk]

There is usual some residual magnetization and that will give the motor one or more weakly preferred positions.

[bdunham7]

It's hard to generalize for all such motors, but if you take a standard design bench grinder with good ball bearings, you can spin the wheels by hand and readily observe that they rotate completely smoothly with absolutely no cogging.  Any preference that is observable for a stopping position seems to be due to very small weight imbalances.  In my experience, this all holds true for single and three phase induction motors.