My great uncle, who lived to 103, cobbled this machine together long ago. He was a machinist around the turn of the century. I'm not sure how old the machine is or the origin. It does have metric bearings and one aluminum pulley in the home made part. This thing is all cast iron and so solid as to be ridiculous.
It had a home made xy table and vise to be used as a mill. It's definitely heavy enough to pull it off. Lol.
The pulleys were very cobbled together. He basically made his own step pulleys but not particularly well.
I intend to use this machine as a fairly heavy drill press. How slow is slow enough to run big drill bits in steel. Let's say up to 1.5" or 2"?
If I do what I'm considering right now I'll get down to 144 rpm but only up to 935 top speed. The pulley reduction will be pretty insane. I'm thinking that will be right in line with larger drills, running annular cutters, and possibly the occasional boring head.
This only has a 1/2 hp single phase motor but I'm considering a 1 hp 3 phase on a vfd eventually.
It had a home made xy table and vise to be used as a mill. It's definitely heavy enough to pull it off. Lol.
The pulleys were very cobbled together. He basically made his own step pulleys but not particularly well.
I intend to use this machine as a fairly heavy drill press. How slow is slow enough to run big drill bits in steel. Let's say up to 1.5" or 2"?
If I do what I'm considering right now I'll get down to 144 rpm but only up to 935 top speed. The pulley reduction will be pretty insane. I'm thinking that will be right in line with larger drills, running annular cutters, and possibly the occasional boring head.
This only has a 1/2 hp single phase motor but I'm considering a 1 hp 3 phase on a vfd eventually.