# Looking at Acra mill



## cgmaster (Feb 25, 2014)

I am looking at purchasing an Acra mill. It appears to be in very good shape. The controls are all tight except the y axis and he has new acme nuts to replace the worn ones. It is the old style with the interchangeable belts on the head. He has some tooling with it and it has a Mitutoyo DRO head but is missing the scales. I am curious if $2000 is a good price. IT comes with a set of collets, rotary table (the handle is broken) from falling on the floor, shars 6" vise and a handful of end mills. Does anyone have experience with these mills?

I plan to set it up using a VFD which I have been researching the last few days. I am leaning toward the Teco ma7200 series. I have almost no experience using VFD's and very limited electronics experience. We do use VFD's at my work and my engineers recommended using Yasgawa (spelling?) or Allen Bradley VFD's as that is all we use. Any recommendations would be helpful on the VFD also. Could I use one VFD to run the mill and a grinder?


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## AlanR (Feb 26, 2014)

I recently bought a Huanyang VFD. It seems that some people look down their noses at them but I find it just fine. I saved enough money by buying Huanyang to pay for several nice switches, a braking resistor and ancillaries for remote control. It has a Hitachi controller chip and I had no problems at all, you do have to plan the power wiring a little carefully because the terminals are fairly small but fork type crimp connectors solve that problem.


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## JimDawson (Feb 26, 2014)

I have never used a Acura mill so I can't address that.

On the VFDs Yasgawa and Allen Bradly are fine.  With regard to Allen Bradly in general; You can buy better but you can't pay more.

I prefer Automation Direct GS2 units.  Their 2 HP unit is $251 and the 3 HP unit is $309  I have these on all of my 3 phase equipment.

Yes, it is possible use one VFD to run both your mill and grinder, but not at the same time.  It would require a bit of wiring and a transfer switch and you must *never* switch over or disconnect any motor with the power to the VFD turned on.  This also assumes that the HP of both motors is about the same.  This has to do with the current limit setting in the VFD.  Size the VFD for the largest HP.

For a transfer switch, you could use the existing switch that is on the mill. 

Hope this helps


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## AlanR (Feb 26, 2014)

JimDawson said:


> I prefer Automation Direct GS2 units.  Their 2 HP unit is $251



The Huanyang 2HP unit is $130, shipped. After working with the Huanyang unit now I can't believe the GS2 can be worth nearly twice the price.


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