My 10EE Conversion

[MattM]

I'm sure this has been done before but I'll give you my take on it. After trying the back gear route and running into what to me were insurmountable problems in lining up the motor with the gearbox I tried a new (to me) approach.

I used a small cast iron pulley (1.23 pitch diameter) on a Marathon 1800 rpm three phase 5hp inverter duty induction motor and simply connected it via V belts to the spindle. The motor is controlled by an Automation Direct GS2 VFD. Total cost was about $1,300.00. If anyone is interested I can give an exact figure.

Fired it up today and made some chips. Seems to work great, took some deep cuts on old axle stock and got a nice finish, Haven't done any threading. RPMs from 24 to 1800. What's not to like?

All that being said I am going to try to get the gearbox to work and may install it later.

 

[deek]

Hey MattM,

I'm glad you got your rig converted. Getting the gear box aligned, is not too bad if you assume that the center hole of the gear box aligns the shaft. I did that and everything worked out ok. Probably better to establish the center of the shaft with the gear box assembled. You could mount the box on your mill table and use your dro to find center of the drive axle then mark the housing with hashes concentric with the axle. Then when you mounted the new plate, you can find center from the hashes. If that doesn't make any sense, then just ignore my ravings.

If you take the time to put the gear box on, I think you'll really like it. I'm now trying to figure out how to properly wire the back gear solenoid to disengage the lock when the motor is stationary. I've got a couple of ideas that I'll post on my thread.

Best,
Deek

 

[MattM]

Deek---Thanks. The gear box project is now on a "back burner" as I am very happy with the direct drive. I've done some threading and that works great and all other operations are to my liking. Only downside I can see is my top speed is only 1300rpm (not the 1800 mentioned above). Other great advantage is that the machine runs very quiet compared to pre-conversion, no blower noise and no warm up time.

I just put all the "take outs" on CL. Some interest in the motor but no sales so far.