Rain lamp parts

Switch

General

Front and back of the thumbwheel roller switch on my vintage rain lamp.

The switch consists of six parts + the interior springy contacts with teeth.

Of course 'UND. LAB. INC." means Underwriters Laboratories, Incorporated (12-25-05), and their name on an electrical product signifies that product passed UL's safety certification.

The circled logo that appears to say "SA" actually says "CSA", for C.S.A. International (12-25-05), which is another certification agency.

Short circuit problems

After unplugging the lamp and disassembling the switch, I discovered that mineral oil had gotten inside the switch and was causing the short circuit and sparking. It looks like the mineral oil came in on the front side where the screw head is, and got on the inside walls of the switch, and finally on the metal connections. Lessons learned:

• When removing the oil from a rain lamp, keep the switch out of the way or else cover it beforehand.
• When doing a lengthy install of electrical connections, check the system after each step.
• Don't assume that a flickering bulb is from a loose wire or bad bulb.

Even after carefully reassembling this switch and having it mostly working, I still had it act up once when it dimmed the light and crackled when I merely rotated the base of the lamp for better alignment. My guess is that the tiny teeth that dig into the wire insulation to tap the live wire somehow pulled away from their solid connection momentarily. I therefore leave my lamp unplugged when not in use until I decide to get the switch completely replaced professionally.

Bulb socket

My bulb socket is connected to one black wire and one white wire. The inside of the socket reads: 250V. There is an original sticker on the side of the socket that reads: 5.

The light bulb socket and surrounding area.

Wire nuts

"Wire nuts" are also called "wire connectors." Wire nuts this size are readily available in hardware stores for only 8-9 cents apiece (12-27-05), depending on their exact size. Nowadays they come in different colors according to size, but on my vintage rain lamp they are black. Inside at the end of each wire nut is a metal helical spring, probably to help ensure a connection along the tapered wires.

The two wire nuts from my vintage rain lamp.

Motor and pump

General

The entire underside of the cage part of my Johnson Industries rain lamp, showing the motor and pump.

I see a potential safety problem in the motor location. Although the motor is completely above the level of the holed tray, if some person unknowingly added so much oil that the oil level rose above the bottom of the holed tray, it is possible the motor could become wet and burn out or blow out. Although a sticker on the lid of the rain lamp ordinarily tells the amount of oil to put in, this sticker is very hard to find and read, and in some cases the sticker is gone altogether. A better design might have been to position the motor a little higher so that the oil would overflow from the side of the lamp before it could ever reach the motor's level.

The motor emits a soft, low hum, which changes volume and sound when a transition is made between there being enough oil to pump and not being enough oil to pump. This motor hum is not very loud, so it would not be distracting to sleep with, for example.

Jakel Motors

jAKEL MOTORS INC
HIGHLAND, ILL

Incredibly, Jakel Motors is still in business:
http://www.jakelinc.com/products/motors.htm (12-11-05)
http://www.jakelinc.com/default.asp (12-11-05)
Jakel, Inc. • 400 Broadway • Highland, Illinois 62249 • Phone: 618.654.2371 • Fax: 618.654.5320

Their "c-frame motors" on their first link bear a close resemblance to my rain lamp motor, so it might be worth calling this company before discarding your rain lamp due to a burned out motor.

Jakel Motors' 238 C-frame Motor, as pictured on their web page.

Photos of my rain lamp's motor and pump

Tilted side view of the motor and oil pump.

One can see four blades inside the oil pump through the hole at the bottom of the pump. These blades apparently rotate clockwise (as viewed from the bottom) since, like an air blower, the oil tube exits the spinning blade region at a clockwise tangent.

Close-up views of the bottom of the oil pump.

Miscellaneous views of the motor and pump.

The blue padding material appears to be for dampening vibrations at the interface beween the motor and cage part of the lamp. My lamp does rattle slightly from vibrations, depending on how solidly it sits on a surface.

It appears that this white paper sticker on the motor once contained writing, but no writing is visible now.

It is disconcerting to see that the electrical wires running to the motor hang so low that they dip into the oil in the bottom basin. This might be the reason one Internet site said that some "Italian style rain lamps" were considered "electrically unsafe," though I don't know that for sure. I tried pushing these wires higher towards the cage, but their length is such that they are mostly fixed in their original position.

The profile of the Johnson Industries motor shows that the electrical wires must dip into the oil.

Other motors

One rain lamp on eBay had a slightly different style motor-pump arrangement than Johnson Industries, as shown below. Note the support bar crossing the bottom, the sealed bottom of one of the posts, and the ridged oil tube. The seller said the lamp had no sticker to designate the manufacturer.

A non-Johnson Industries rain lamp motor.

Oil tube