Well, I used to wonder at some of the, ahem, amazing finds I sometimes hear about (10EE Monarch for $20, that sort of thing). Some of them are a little hard to believe. Today I became a believer.
I was looking for something completely unrelated on CL and just happened to find a posting for a Baldor grinder. I have never owned one, but have seen pictures.... Anyway, the picture of the machine was taken with nothing else in the frame to compare it with, to get a sense of scale. There was a pretty blurry close-up of the nameplate. The model number meant nothing to me. I noticed that it was 3-phase, which I don't have. The nameplate was kind of beat up, but I could see it would run on 208-230. The HP was a 3 and then the rest was pretty scratched up. Hmm... 3-something..... Has to be 3/4 HP, right? What else would start with a 3? The light went on in my head - I have a VFD at home that's good to 1 HP, and it will run with 120V input! Perfect! And he only wanted a hundred bucks! I'm all over this one. Called and set up a time to come and see it.
When I got there it was a machine shop! The owner was a great guy, very pleasant. He explained that they did mostly job-shop work for the aerospace industry. They had plans to start doing big fab jobs and had bought the Baldor for that. When the economy crashed in '09 those plans went out the window. It sat around for years and they never even turned it on other than to make sure it worked when they first got it. He had decided it was time to clean house.
When we went out to the yard in back it was immediately obvious to me that I had misread the photos. There wasn't anything after the 3, just scratches. It was a
3HP grinder, model 1216W,
not 3/4HP.
I looked at the grinder, then looked at my little company car, a Chevy Captiva. How in the heck am I going to get this home? No problem, the guy grabbed some tools and disassembled it, and between the 3 of us managed to get it stuffed in.
One problem - I'm gonna need a bigger VFD....