Hi, All,
This past week has been hectic and time on the lathe refurb very limited, I had most of this work completed more than a week ago but only now have time to post up on progress.
This Colchester lathe was wired with mains 380/440 volt control wiring , Not a good idea when you look at the swarf that had found its way into the control push button box
I am running it from a 240v single phase supply through an inverter
The inverter is housed in a wall mounted panel and has an additional cooling fan /filter which runs when the motor does. A motor speed control pot is also panel mounted, it or another could be also mounted on the machine if needed, (8 spare cores on the control cable)
I removed the original contactor panel from the lathe, and built a new one to suit 110v control voltage
A 240/110v transformer in the wall panel feeds the control circuit,
I kept the original wiring to the control buttons, so as the lathe could revert to its original configuration if required, (if I get fed up with it and sell it)
The main motor start /stop buttons now switchs a small relay which sends a signal to the inverter to run up/ wind down the motor,
I modified a latching stop button to fit the lathe front panel, it adds an extra safety margin and also brings it up to date more!
The coolant pump contactor supply is looped from the main motor feed and controlled from its original buttons
Even though the label plate on the pump showed dual voltage, the low voltage winding ends are not brought out to the terminal box
so it will need some further surgery
I made a bracket to mount the oil filter head in place, time will tell if this is a good enough location, It clears all moving parts ok but I could only get one stud fitted from the bracket to the filter head
Cheers for now
John
