- Joined
- Oct 3, 2021
- Messages
- 2
Hello. I am a founder and teacher at a community makerspace in our small mountain town in the Sierra Nevadas - the Truckee Roundhouse.
We have an old Bridgeport mill in the makerspace metal shop that was donated years ago by a shop that closed down. It is not used very frequently (sadly!).
Since the building does not have 3 phase 220V power, at some point the Bridgeport had a VFD added to it. As such the mechanical dial on the mill does not solely control the speed. One must turn on the VFD to "run" and then while the spindle is spinning, dial the mill to a certain RPM value and then use the potentiometer on the VFD to set it to the digitally displayed RPM.
The person that set this all up added a sticker to the mill that said "KEEP MECHANICAL DIAL SET TO XXXX RPM" at some point, but the sticker has disappeared. It was my understanding that in order for the VFD digital dial to read accurately, the machine speed dial had to be set to a certain RPM and stay there.
How can I go about figuring out what this should be? Is there a way to do it mathematically via the power, data plate on the Bridgeport, and VFD manual, or do I need to rent a tachometer from O'Reilly and get some reflective tape and run some experiments?
Here are a few photos. When the VFD is set to "freq" the range is 0-60, presumably Hz.
We have an old Bridgeport mill in the makerspace metal shop that was donated years ago by a shop that closed down. It is not used very frequently (sadly!).
Since the building does not have 3 phase 220V power, at some point the Bridgeport had a VFD added to it. As such the mechanical dial on the mill does not solely control the speed. One must turn on the VFD to "run" and then while the spindle is spinning, dial the mill to a certain RPM value and then use the potentiometer on the VFD to set it to the digitally displayed RPM.
The person that set this all up added a sticker to the mill that said "KEEP MECHANICAL DIAL SET TO XXXX RPM" at some point, but the sticker has disappeared. It was my understanding that in order for the VFD digital dial to read accurately, the machine speed dial had to be set to a certain RPM and stay there.
How can I go about figuring out what this should be? Is there a way to do it mathematically via the power, data plate on the Bridgeport, and VFD manual, or do I need to rent a tachometer from O'Reilly and get some reflective tape and run some experiments?
Here are a few photos. When the VFD is set to "freq" the range is 0-60, presumably Hz.