Hey Jon, where the heck have you been dude?
Yea, Matt sent me a brand new motor (I didn't even ask...) to replace the dinged one. I'll likely use parts off the single phase to repair it and keep it for a spare. I had some stuff I wanted to make on the new lathe right away, so didn't want to start tearing the lathe apart until I got those done. I basically got serious about the change over a week ago.
But I'm struggling a bit with the change-over to 3 phase/VFD. I haven't done any electrical rework in over 20 years so I have nothing to do the work with, and never having done this exact stuff before, I didn't know what I needed until I needed i,t and it's another week waiting for something to arrive.
I have a large NEMA-1 box that I'm mounting to the side of the stand near the lathe head. When I ordered it from Automation Direct they suggested a sub-panel, and at the time I couldn't figure out why I would need it so I didn't get it. I figured out why I need it last Saturday morning. It should be here sometime this week (Bill drumming his fingers on his desk). There have been a string of events like this.
So far, I've managed to make a new control panel for the front of the lathe and have switches on it for E-stop, JOG (fwd and rev), Frequency/motor speed, and Braking. I need to finish making the wiring harnesses for the front panel (waiting on colored heat shrink tubing for that), and start mounting pieces on the sub-panel when it arrives. I'm literally taking the fiber board with the bus-bar and 24v transformer and transferring it to the larger box. The original electrical box is completely empty. I put it back on the lathe to give me more room for laying stuff on top of the headstock.
Oh, and I have to mount the braking resistor inside the big box as well. This last weekend had me changing out the single-phase motor for the three-phase, and mounting the large box on the lathe stand. Hand drilling the five 3/4" holes in the bottom of the box with a cheap import drill bit was a little more excitement that I wanted...
Then once everything is installed/mounted I need to re-read the instructions in the manual for changing control parameters in the VFD, because I want to do this manually from the front panel the first time so I know exactly what is in the VFD. That and I figure I have a bigger chance of screwing things up if I try to do a config file download to do the initial programming. I'll probably have all of the electrical done this next weekend.
If I didn't forget anything else.
Mechanical mods are SO much easier.
Hey Bill,
I thought I was the only one who had not finished wiring their 1340GT and had it running on the VFD...
Looks like I have company.
My issue was the AC business got to hopping, I did not get into my shop much the whole month of April...
Over the last few weeks, I have all my wiring done. I left the 240V-24V AC transformer in the lathe elec box... and put the main relay Mark suggested in that box also. I mounted a NEMA plastic box below the headstock on the right of the cabinet; it has the main power switch, VFD, a couple of terminal strips, and a cooling fan arrangement (intake screen and fan with screen).
I put the brake resistor on the back of the cabinet, and used stick-on velcro to put a power strip next to it for 120V accessories.
For the front panel, I put a new lighted E-stop, new jog button (not directional), and the POT (variable resistor)... and left the factory white light-bulb in the left hole, not used at this time.
I need to do as you mentioned... study the programming procedure and manually input the parameters.... then hope to hit the power and pray I do not let the magic smoke out of anything....
I still need to fit the QCTP Matt sent me... not sure if I am gonna use the T piece that came with the lathe (it sure looks nice, yet would take a lot of machining), or fire up the mill and make a new one.
Then on to alignment and making parts/chips... or is that chips/parts...
Will be out/town over the weekend at a Gyro-Copter gathering in NC... so probably will not get much done until next week.
I found the wiring was tedious... I kept changing my mind about where to mount something and re-doing it. Probably took twice as long as it should have... yet I am happy with it now...
Looking forward to hearing you have yours running, as I would like to have mine running also...
Bill, send me a PM, my ability to start a PM conversation does not seem to work... THX
John/GA
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