Insulation between motor laminations?

[TimNJ]

Greetings,

I have an old radial arm saw that I’m rebuilding. I’ve cleaned it up, put new bearings in the motor and now want to paint it. The motor has exposed laminations on the body, presumably to save space or something.

As far as I know, there’s usually insulation between laminations, perhaps in the form of “backlack” or other varnish-y type material. Is this insulation also applied to the edges of each lamination? If I were to sand or wire wheel off the existing paint, do I run the risk of removing insulation and causing some lamination to lamination shorts? My thought is that the distance between laminations is already set by the thickness of the insulation between lamination, so I wouldn’t be shorting any together unless i applied severe pressure, enough to deform the laminations “into each other”.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Tim

[moffy]

Sanding or wire wheeling will produce metal swarf which can go anywhere, not really desirable.

[TimNJ]

I mean, it’s just the stator by itself right now, fairly easy to clean.

[TimNJ]

Unless by “anywhere”, you mean on a more microscopic level as it applies to my original question.

[strawberry]

must electrically insulate windings(so that vibration and dirt). other thing is esthetics

[Grandchuck]

Laminations are insulated to lessen induced currents and hence core losses.