motor replacement.

macguy

macguy

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I have an old craftsman 6 inch lathe sitting around I want to use. I don't want to set it up with the belt and pulley system. I want to put on a motor like on a mini lathe. Any one done this and is there a good source for motors?
 
Are You just talking about eliminating a counter pulley setup, or are You saying you want to do away with pullies and belt all together, and go to some kind of gear driven setup? I'm trying to picture what You mean. I guess a source for motors may depend on what kind you want, but there are many places on the web for surpluss motors, like Surpluss Center for example. I would recomend a google search. I've been looking at blowers with them lately, and there are more places then I can count that come up in a google search. There were sources for both new and used.

Shipping can be kind of high on the motors, as they weigh alot, so a local motor works may be a better choice. I'm waiting on shipping, but I just purchased a belt driven blower, and It was alot cheaper to ship without the motor. I have a 1/2hp motor with a craftsman label (made By someone else I'm sure) It has a triple stepdown pulley setup, and I may use that. Anyway I bought that motor some time ago as an extra lathe motor, and even back then I paid a pretty penny for shipping. Anyway I've seen some blower & fan motors that are basically the same thing. I think they are around 1725 rpm's.

I don't know what it would take to run a lathe like yours, and i guess it would also depend on if you wanted variable speed, but not mentioning any names, some lathes use a fan motor, and some can be wired in a 3 or 4spd configuration I believe.

There is also usually a good selection of motors on ebay.

There's probably some good articles online for doing the conversion You want. There seems to be sites on just about everything else these days. I learned alot about the different styles of spray booths I could build, and the in's and outs of each one, which was a good thing, because one style I was gonna do can cause some problems with dust getting in the finish, and that was something that I hadn't considered. You can also pull too much air which I wasn't aware of.

Wish I could be of more help, I'm sure there are people here that know alot more about the conversion then I do, hopefully you get the info Your looking for. Good Luck with it.:)

Greg
 
macguy said:
I have an old craftsman 6 inch lathe sitting around I want to use. I don't want to set it up with the belt and pulley system. I want to put on a motor like on a mini lathe. Any one done this and is there a good source for motors?
Click to expand...

Depending on what your intentions for the lathe are, a DC motor with a rheostat type set up may work for you. Try eBay.......
 
You might want to try a Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) system. This is a 3 phase variable speed system. Instead of having a rotary or static phase converter, you hook up an electronic phase converter to your normal single phase AC. The electronics convert the single phase AC to 3 phases, and can also vary the frequency in a very wide range, instead of the constant 60 Hz. What this allows you to do is hook up a normal 3 phase motor and have variable speed at the twist of a button. I think for a small 1/2 HP motor, the frequency drive is only about $100. The 3 phase motor is probably also about $100 or so for that size. We have a very large industrial treadmill at work used for testing wear on wheels that is VFD controlled. It works very well.

Here is a very nice site that converted a mill to VFD drive.

http://www.5bears.com/vfd.htm

And here is a site that sells new and used VFD's. They have a 1HP used model for $100.

http://kitchener.kijiji.ca/c-buy-an...rsion-using-vfd-transformer-W0QQAdIdZ54219349
 
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