Powering a 1HP BLDC Lathe in a Van

I would go the toy hauler, if of course the budget can cope. Advantage you have sleeping, cooking and all the accommodation conveniences of a regular caravan or motorhome plus plenty of room in a separate compartment for the lathe and whatever other toys you might have. If you are camping in regular campsites you should have sufficient power on site.

If you want to be power independent just do a cost / convenience analysis between stand alone AC gen set. and upgraded alternator, batteries and inverter, if you choose the battery route I'd seriously consider lithium batteries, they will outperform auto lead acid batteries hand over fist. they last longer and are much lighter, yes they do cost more, but over their life they are actually quite a bit cheaper, and unlike regular batteries they don't mind being left idle for extended periods.

Another thing to be aware of is auto alternators don't like putting out full, power at idle you will need to set up some means of adjusting a high idle about 30 to 50% above normal.
 
Some years ago while travelling around (Australia), with my kids, towing a 20ft caravan. I met up with some folks who had a mobile workshop, two actually. They were two families, mum, dad, and a bunch of kids, they lived in two 24 ft caravans each towed by a 7 ton dual cab truck. In the back of each truck was a workshop.

One had a lathe, a mill and a decent size drill press. plus a fitters bench, a small grinder for sharpening lathe tools and drills, the other had a couple of arc welding sets plus oxy, a couple of decent grinders, this one also had a 15kva 3ph diesel gen set, which gave them enough power to run everything, including the vans for when they were off site.

They spent their lives travelling around the country, heading north in the winter, and south in the summer, calling into remote farms, towns and villages. Repairing sharpening end generally fixing things up. Chatting with them they had a good life, and I gathered earned good money, The kids loved it different school every week.

I would loved to have done that, but there was no way my wife would have any part of it, so it remained a pipe dream.
 
I believe you can get the van with dual 220 amp alternators. I would do the, and then you can easily add a few extra batteries for lights and other stuff.
 
JimDawson said:
If you insist on running the van engine to power the lathe then I would install a second high output alternator and dedicate it to the tool power. Many emergency vehicles have dual alternator setups. If buying a new full size van, a dual alternator system may be a standard(ish) option. Aftermarket high output alternators are very available, and most likely full installation kits for dual setups for about any vehicle.

Having said that, a 2000W or 3000W Honda generator is very quiet and would easily run your lathe. Pure sine wave output also, and they have pretty good surge capacity. But if you go that route make sure you buy genuine Honda from a Honda dealer.

7 amps at 120V is 840W, so realistically a 2000W inverter would be fine, the start load is not going to be 3x on a BLDC motor. And good inverters have some surge capacity, but as said above, get one with a pure sine wave output. There is a lot of cheap junk out there.

Above all plan for expansion. First is the lathe and the next thing you know you will need a mill, then a band saw, and ........ and........ and........ I think you're going to need a bigger van. :grin:
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This is the way i think it will work the best. If you go the lithium battery route you will need a special charger and a panel to watch power used and left. They run totally out of power before charging but they get hot too. So time spent cooling will mean two batteries to lessen down time. Well it does for me with battery tools. Two alternators was my first thought and seperate batteries with switch to control the time fir charging. Van shouldnt need constant running.
 
Power tool batteries are pretty small compared to the power they output and this causes heating. A larger battery putting out only a little more power won't heat up much. Power tool batteries have 5 or 10 of the 18650 size cells, a 12V 100AH battery has around 100 18650 cells, or four massive prismatic cells. A lithium charger is required, these are hardly special these days. Many chargers are programmable for various chemistries.
 
As has already been pointed out by others this is an interesting mental exercise, but not especially practical....

When I run the numbers I keep running up against the reality that buying a van and installing all these batteries along with the charging systems to make it work will come close to buying a piece of land in Troy, OH.

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If this were me, and I was planning on attending this school for the next few years. I would buy real property with the money and get a toyhauler to live/work in. That would give me an investment that would probably not depreciate, and likely eliminate the problem of law enforcement or anyone else bugging me while I worked on my projects.

Trucks can be rented and/or equipment can be shipped. A 40' shipping container with a generator would also do the trick and give plenty of extra space to do whatever I wanted.

Having just lived in neighboring Michigan for the last 10 years I have a little experience with property there. We bought a commercial building on ~1 acre for just under $100k, built an additional 40 x 60 insulated and heated commercial pole building for ~$80k and sold the whole thing a few years later for $250k. It was the only profitable part of the business;)

I realize owning property in another state is a challenging proposition but so is setting up a lathe to make accurate cuts. That's one thing that hasn't really been addressed with all the discussion here, will a PM 10x30 lathe do good work mounted in the back of a van? The OP currently has it bolted to a concrete slab, that's very different than running it in a Walmart parking lot where you just parked 20 minutes ago.

So, I admit it, I love these mental exercises. But, what I personally want to do with hobby machining is get better at making really accurate parts and a parking lot just doesn't seem like the right place for doing that. If the goal is just to continue the hobby while away from home for 60 days learning CAD and 3D printing would provide a significant challenge for me. And, it could be done for a few hundred dollars in the comfort of my motel room. I've been working conferences for the past six years so I've spent a LOT of nights in hotels, anything that can happen right there is what's most likely to happen anyway.

So, go for it if you really want a machine shop in a van. It might work great or you might find out why you don't see other people doing it very often. I just brought my shop trailer down from storage in Nevada and am contemplating if it makes sense to put any machine tools back into it but just getting it level enough to do accurate work would be a challenge....

Cheers,

John
 
There's several times the input of ideas for what you are attempting, so I won't add another here. What I want to bring up is the lathe/milling machine/whatever needn't be level. It must be true (to itself) and rigidly mounted, but level is only a convenience factor for checking position of the work. The important thing is that it must be rigid. Bolted to the floor doesn't cut it, it needs to be fastened to the frame.

I spent several years aboard ships, one of which was only steady when it was in dry dock. At sea, it rolled a little every time the tide came or went. (Icebreaker, round hull) The machine shop wasn't level to begin with and with the ship moving, it went every which way. But the machines were fastened to the deck rigidly. That's what matters. My shop was next door to the machine shop and I spent a great amount of time there. The work done was by a master of his craft.

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I was doing great at Hobart (the welding school) until the coronavirus outbreak. I had prepaid for an Airbnb for 57 nights plus a round trip airline ticket.

After I completed one course, they closed the school, and I had to buy another ticket to fly home. So that was about $2,000 down the drain right there. Like most people, I work very hard for my money one hour at a time. These days, I am paying $35 a night for this Airbnb room to sit empty, and I have two flights that I paid for that I will not take. I made the mistake of leaving about $200 worth of tools in my locker at school, and a suitcase with about $400 worth of clothing, etc. in it at the Airbnb (at the time, I thought that I would be returning in four weeks).

I work for UPS, and when I returned home my work needed me to return to my route because UPS is completely overwhelmed. I am working on my vacations now, so that is helping to save up for a huge lathe.

Long story short, I am just going to STAY HOME & buy a really nice PM-1660TL lathe and just take weekend welding & machining classes at The Crucible in Oakland, CA.

It is not anybody’s fault, but this one trip has left me disillusioned about traveling far away from home to take classes.

I have previously traveled to Oregon to take classes, and that worked out great because there was no public health emergency.

I had hoped for a complete, formal welding education, but I will just have to make do with the limited curriculum at The Crucible & get good at welding by practicing a lot at home.
 
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I am used to having a full shop available to me at home, and the evenings and weekends at school were too long for me to be satisfied with just books and a laptop. I like to work with my hands.

My wife was really happy with this development! She has been 100% behind the purchase of this large lathe from the very beginning. The order is $21,500. I am glad that I have a PM-1030V to use while I wait. I really love my PM-1030V. I should probably sell it when I get the larger lathe, but I have a while to think about that because it will take about 18 months to save up.
 
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