Replacement Lathe

milomilo

milomilo

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I currently have a Husky PC36 lathe, and i have been looking to upgrade to a better lathe. A neighbor bought a lathe a year ago but never set it up and now he says he would like to sell it. It is a Monarch 10EE with a 20" bed. It came with 3 phase but was ran on a hydraulic pump for several years due to no 3 phase availability. Manufacturer date is 1943. Seriously thinking about buying it and selling my current lathe. The Monarch is a far better lathe than I have now. Plan on taking off the hydraulic pump and using a VFD for power.

Overall condition looks good to me. Comes with a 3 jaw chuck, no 4 jaw. Includes a steady rest, KD tool post, and has a taper attachment. One of my questions is will a 10hp VFD run the lathe OK? I plan on getting some pics tomorrow to post.
 
milomilo said:
I currently have a Husky PC36 lathe, and i have been looking to upgrade to a better lathe. A neighbor bought a lathe a year ago but never set it up and now he says he would like to sell it. It is a Monarch 10EE with a 20" bed. It came with 3 phase but was ran on a hydraulic pump for several years due to no 3 phase availability. Manufacturer date is 1943. Seriously thinking about buying it and selling my current lathe. The Monarch is a far better lathe than I have now. Plan on taking off the hydraulic pump and using a VFD for power.

Overall condition looks good to me. Comes with a 3 jaw chuck, no 4 jaw. Includes a steady rest, KD tool post, and has a taper attachment. One of my questions is will a 10hp VFD run the lathe OK? I plan on getting some pics tomorrow to post.
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Hi Chris,

10EEs of that vintage had a 3HP DC spindle motor powered by a 3-phase motor/generator (MG) set. The spindle motor had a "back gear" unit that could be run either direct or 4:1 reduction for low speed operation. Most VFD conversions use the back gear unit for better low speed performance. I don't know how satisfactory it would be without the back gear. You need to find out how much of the original drive is left. If your friend still has the pieces to put the original drive back together, that's the way to go. You can use an inexpensive "static converter" to run the 3-phase MG from single phase.
 
Cal Haines said:
Hi Chris,

10EEs of that vintage had a 3HP DC spindle motor powered by a 3-phase motor/generator (MG) set. The spindle motor had a "back gear" unit that could be run either direct or 4:1 reduction for low speed operation. Most VFD conversions use the back gear unit for better low speed performance. I don't know how satisfactory it would be without the back gear. You need to find out how much of the original drive is left. If your friend still has the pieces to put the original drive back together, that's the way to go. You can use an inexpensive "static converter" to run the 3-phase MG from single phase.
Click to expand...

The hydraulic pump that they used to drive the lathe attached to the pulley shaft and would be simple to remove. The 3 phase motor and wiring is still in place.
 
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I have read of a number of10EE conversions which used a larger Hp motor running a VFD with good results without the back gear. I think there are a few factors that I have seen as suggestions. Use a 7.5-10Hp motor, run sensorless vector mode. There is a few tricks to squeeze a bit more out of this scenario. If you use what is known as an inverter motor, you can spin them much higher RPM with full Hp, so this a 7.5Hp motor can wind to around 4500 -5000RPM and a 10 Hp around 4000RPM. By spinning the motor higher it gives you more range on the low end to go lower. Look at the Black Max and Blue Max Marathon motors, Baldor IDNM series. There is a very wide range in pricing, so you need to hunt on eBay and know how to find one. In running one of these motors in sensorless vector, you can also push the short term overload to almost 2X the motor rating under very tight RPM control.

Now the wrinkle to all this, is you need a huge VFD to drive this, and even larger if running single phase. So something like a 20Hp WJ200-150LF will run 1K, and then the associated wiring. So a lot of costs to figure into the picture.

http://www.veoh.com/watch/yapi-iM8Hrx9gaXY
 
I know very little about 3 phase but it looks ot me like this lathe is all set up for 3 phase. So I should be able to use a VFD for power and presuming all the electrical is OK it should run like it should.
 
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