In my continuing search for a lathe I talked to a friend that does wood
working about my search.
He suggested I look into what he called a speed limiter for the motor as
a way of getting the speed down on some lathes that look nice but have
just too fast a minimum speed for unballanced objects.
Anyone have experience with these?
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 04:47:55 GMT, william kossack
<[email protected]> wrote:
>He suggested I look into what he called a speed limiter for the motor as
>a way of getting the speed down on some lathes that look nice but have
>just too fast a minimum speed for unballanced objects.
I wouldn't do this, I'd just choose a different lathe.
You need the variable speed, sure enough. It's nice to start slow and
work up, especially if you're starting with big unbalanced chunks of
timber and then working down to narrow spindles. Bowl turning
obviously needs slower speeds, but you can manage to swap belts for a
session of bowl-work without too much trouble. It is nice though to
have dial-selectable variable speed without needing to stop the lathe,
even for working bowls (especially sinking a deep one).
I don't think an electronic speed control is the right choice here. A
VFD drive (usually used to drive 3-phase motors) would be great, but
they're expensive. Maybe if you're already trying to run a 3phase
motor on a single phase supply.
The simple and cheap electronic speed control (like a beefed-up light
dimmer) only works for universal (brushed) motors, not induction
motors. I wouldn't want to use a brushed motor to drive a lathe.
The lathe I use is a cheap entry-level hobbyist lathe. Even that
though has a mechanical variable speed drive - they're pretty common
these days.
--
Do whales have krillfiles ?
The problem is that the lathes with slow enough turn rates that I've
found run in the $2,000 range.
500 rpm is just too fast to start out with and that is what the
$500-$1000 lathes run.
Andy Dingley wrote:
>On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 04:47:55 GMT, william kossack
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
>>He suggested I look into what he called a speed limiter for the motor as
>>a way of getting the speed down on some lathes that look nice but have
>>just too fast a minimum speed for unballanced objects.
>>
>>
>
>I wouldn't do this, I'd just choose a different lathe.
>
>You need the variable speed, sure enough. It's nice to start slow and
>work up, especially if you're starting with big unbalanced chunks of
>timber and then working down to narrow spindles. Bowl turning
>obviously needs slower speeds, but you can manage to swap belts for a
>session of bowl-work without too much trouble. It is nice though to
>have dial-selectable variable speed without needing to stop the lathe,
>even for working bowls (especially sinking a deep one).
>
>I don't think an electronic speed control is the right choice here. A
>VFD drive (usually used to drive 3-phase motors) would be great, but
>they're expensive. Maybe if you're already trying to run a 3phase
>motor on a single phase supply.
>
>The simple and cheap electronic speed control (like a beefed-up light
>dimmer) only works for universal (brushed) motors, not induction
>motors. I wouldn't want to use a brushed motor to drive a lathe.
>
>The lathe I use is a cheap entry-level hobbyist lathe. Even that
>though has a mechanical variable speed drive - they're pretty common
>these days.
>
>--
>Do whales have krillfiles ?
>
>