This is kind of amazing. Your Rockwell Drill Press is a dead ringer for my Walker-Turner Drill press. So which came first the chicken or the egg?
My drill press came from the Hanford Nuclear Area. It was deemed obsolete (motor mount plate was broken) and set outside. When an opportune time came it was donated to J.M. Perry Institute, a local trade school. They in turn had much more modern equipment that was not broken so it went to the electrical department. They had no use so it just sat, outside, neglected.
While attending a continuing education class for my electrical trade I saw it and inquired of the department lead just what the story was. Ken filled me in and said it was probably headed for the scrap yard. I saw my signal to jump. A $100 donation to the picnic and party fund for the electrical section and it was mine.
It was originally a dark grey but had about four coats of a dark sky blue slopped all over it. Between that and the rust it was flat butt ugly. I then took it to a fellow who soda blasted it for me to bare metal. The broken casting was brazed and repaired. The half horse motor was three phase so I acquired one in single phase. No fit. The way it mounts made it a no go. The original motor matched nothing in normal NEMA frame sizes without rebuilding the whole top end. Mostly not wanting to change the looks of the machine I reinstalled the original motor and picked up a single to three phase VFD. Best deal yet. I set a control panel high next to the quill feed and have forward, reverse, stop, speed, and overload reset at the tips of my fingers. Could not be sweeter. Especially when one of the grandkids jams it up. It just trips out and in about fifteen seconds you can reset and go again. No harm, no foul. Add on about six cans of Dove grey shaker can and some black trim and it is a working fool now. A cool/lube system was set inside too. What a difference that makes drilling half inch holes in half inch material.
I tried one of those add-a phase units before the VFD. A can with a contactor and a couple capacitors in it. WHAT A P
OS. That thing was almost $200 and went in the trash. The VFD was $235 and is SWEET. Mother nature and machinery make three phase and it can not be duplicated correctly with a pile of
s--t. You either have power less three phase due to bad phase angles being generated, hot motors, and or a big power bill for using ten horsepower worth of machinery to run a two horse mill.
uch:
And that's the way it is in the land of Grand Coulee Dam.
