Restoring A Burke #1 Horizontal

Alright, got the motor control mounted and fired her up. It runs smooth and quiet. I have some cutters on their way too me, so should be able to cut some steel next week!20150819_193638.jpg
 
I ran it for about 30 minutes and the bearing temp was 88*F...which isn't much higher than ambiant...looks good to me. I didn't mention this, but I used Kluber grease in the spindle...expensive, but good stuff.
 
I'm a bit late to the party ,brilliant restoration and interesting looking mill . I'm in the process of refurbishing a little Centec 2 horizontal mill . Biggest outlay to date were the Timken tapered roller bearings , cost more than I paid for the mill :)......Anyways looking forward to seeing your mill cutting some chips ....

Sean
 
I'm a bit late to the party ,brilliant restoration and interesting looking mill . I'm in the process of refurbishing a little Centec 2 horizontal mill . Biggest outlay to date were the Timken tapered roller bearings , cost more than I paid for the mill :)......Anyways looking forward to seeing your mill cutting some chips .... Sean

Hi Sean, I am sure there are many people here that would love to see your restoration.....I know I would!
Please feel free to start a new thread and share whatever you can.
Don't worry if it's slow progress most of us have been there.
I bet you will get lots of useful advice and perhaps find some others that have the same machine.

-brino
 
Very nice looking machine. Great job on the restore. I've never quite understood D.C. Motors on these machines. So, Can you run a D.C. Motor at any speed, with no change in torque? If so, what kind of controller did you use with the motor? And how do you estimate the actual pulley speeds produced by the motor?

Sorry for all the questions. Always,wondered why D.C. Motors aren't used more in these applications.

Thanks
Glenn
 
Sean, thank you for the compliments. I actually got the tooling in and made chips for a few week, then sold the mill. It would be ideal for certain scenarios, however for my little hobby shop it wasn't going to be used too much.

Glenn, I used the DC motor just because I had one on hand. In my opinion, DC motors are a very viable alternative. I think people just know and trust AC motors with a VFD more due to them being used more in manufactured equipment. DC motors retain torque better at low speeds in my experience, and are quieter. Typically DC motors and controllers are cheaper than a VFD/AC motor combo. For quick reversing applications, I think an AC motor/VFD is better...but how often do you use that on a horizontal mill (I'm thinking in the ballpark of never). Now if you were doing a lot of tapping, then I'd stick with AC and VFD. For some reason every time I see this come up, it is a very heated discussion...which is odd to me. For my setup, I used a Leeson speed controller, but there are a bunch of brands. Typically you find 90V or 180V permanent magnet motors, so make sure the controller matches the motor voltage. As far as pulley speed goes, on this particular machine I didn't have a clue. I just adjusted speed based on the sound of the cutter. On my millrite mill, I adapted a Baldor 3 phase AC motor and a VFD. For this I bought a cheap digital tachometer with a hall effect sensor and attached the magnet to the very top of the quill shaft. (like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Blue-4-Digi...856941&hash=item3d2f28d990:g:XMAAAOSw5cNYezt- ) This gave me the rpm of the quill, so for larger cutters you may have to do a little math.
 
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