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Thanksgiving.
I'm sitting on the sofa still feeling stuffed I'm a brit but SWMBO / XYL is a California girl.
My main lathe is an early Myford ML7. I'm only the 4th owner as far as I can tell. I've replaced the old single phase motor with a 6 pole 3 phase motor and variable frequency drive (VFD). The single phase motors are rough and noisey due to torque ripple and don't like frequent starting and stopping. That is why the Super & had a clutch. Adding the VFD makes the lathe much quieter, gives better surface finish and doesn't mind stopping and starting. Next modification is an electronic lead screw (ELS). This is stepper drive for the carriage thet is syncronised to the spindle. It allows you to cut any pitch thread without a gearbox or manually ghanging gear wheels.
Probably of more use for electronics is my small vertical mill. It's lightweight so would not be great for hacking out lumps of steel. However it has a relatively high speed spindle and long X travel on the table. The high speed spindle is good for running small cutters foe light alloy or plastic. It makes tasks you normally hate like cutting a hole in a panel for a meter or display soo easy.
I don't want to go down the CNC route as A. I don't do enough and B. I don't use CAD.
Robert, thank you so much for your post. I was well aware of the difference in torque ripple between single and three phase motors and was wondering whether my heavily tweaked Hobbymat lathe (bought new) would benefit from a three-phase motor, so I bought it a three-phase motor. Annoyingly, my static three-phase converter (used for the Colchester Bantam) won't go as low as 250W. Whoops! Internet searches didn't come up with anything useful regarding VFD drive and ripple. Any other comments you might have regarding VFDs and motors would be very welcome.
I'm happy to swap change wheels (Hobbymat) or pull levers (Bantam) to cut threads, but I can see the attraction of an electronic leadscrew. I have recently learned that it is a stupid idea to think that you can cut internal threads in 306 grade stainless steel; horrible stuff.
I suspect I am fully with you on your A and B points.
Zenith wrote: ↑Thu Nov 27, 2025 4:08 pm
I hope you are having a nice time.
Is it a fairly relaxed day of eating and drinking too much, or is it a family thing where you are obliged to invite relatives you don't see very often? Then they kick off on politics, or their great interest in some sport nobody is interested in, or some family row everyone thought was forgotten, such as who collared granny's clock and shouldn't have. Then you remember why you don't see them very often.
It can be both. In our case it was indeed some individuals you don't see often but was a relaxed day. No politics nor sports or other stupid bullshit.
An old gray beard with an attitude. I don't bite.....sometimes
Robert wrote: ↑Thu Nov 27, 2025 9:29 pm
Thanksgiving.
I'm sitting on the sofa still feeling stuffed I'm a brit but SWMBO / XYL is a California girl.
My main lathe is an early Myford ML7. I'm only the 4th owner as far as I can tell. I've replaced the old single phase motor with a 6 pole 3 phase motor and variable frequency drive (VFD). The single phase motors are rough and noisey due to torque ripple and don't like frequent starting and stopping. That is why the Super & had a clutch. Adding the VFD makes the lathe much quieter, gives better surface finish and doesn't mind stopping and starting. Next modification is an electronic lead screw (ELS). This is stepper drive for the carriage thet is syncronised to the spindle. It allows you to cut any pitch thread without a gearbox or manually ghanging gear wheels.
Probably of more use for electronics is my small vertical mill. It's lightweight so would not be great for hacking out lumps of steel. However it has a relatively high speed spindle and long X travel on the table. The high speed spindle is good for running small cutters foe light alloy or plastic. It makes tasks you normally hate like cutting a hole in a panel for a meter or display soo easy.
I don't want to go down the CNC route as A. I don't do enough and B. I don't use CAD.
Robert.
Thread cutting and change wheels is sure an art but on my Harrison 12 I'm lucky to not need to venture into the gearchest as this lathe is fully optioned and with a Metric/Imperial changeover lever. There are a very few of the less common pitches I can't cut but with fingers crossed I'll never need them.
In the Harrison Lathe io group one of the dudes went to a lot of trouble to build a SW package to help with change wheel selection to enable use of the main gears you have and an assortment of change wheels.
Sorta mix and match to get the correct pitch or so darn close to it not to be an issue except for loooong nuts. https://ridethegeartrain.com/
I wound up excavating my South Bend 10K last night to shorten a piece of lamp coupling pipe.
Got it a few years ago from a friend who had a machine shop, and I'm running it on single phase 240 using a TECO VFD with soft start.
It doesn't get used often (obviously; it's half buried), but when I need it it's a really handy thing to have. One of these years I'll get my hands on a vertical mill...
And in the bottom photo a Lincoln MIG set. I've got a modern inverter MIG set, which also does MMA. I haven't used it for a time, but it paid for itself welding patches on the bottom of my Ford Mondeo, before it got beyond and had to be scrapped. The MMA function is OK, but I have a couple of MMA inverters, which are smaller and I'd rather use. I haven't used those for a time either.
Yup. Bought the Lincoln in the early 00s when the catalytic converter flange on my Miata's exhaust broke off. The flange was mild steel while the rest of the catback was SS, and in near perfect condition. I’d wanted to get an aftermarket exhaust, but as the OEM one was still in such good shape, I just couldn’t see scrapping it that soon and elected instead to drop the $600 on getting the welder to fix the old exhaust. Got a new toy and several more years out of the original exhaust - win-win.
nixiefreqq wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 1:20 pm
Somehow I always expect you guys to show off your hybrid wafer and die wire bonding setups.
Instead we see engine lathes and welders.
Stone knives and bearskins.
Agreed, lathes and welders are low technology, but the great thing about them is that:
(A) They're affordable and very versatile
(B) You can use them to make high technology
I've made a lot of test gear in steel cake tins and tobacco tins. (If it can keep stuff fresh, it's good for keeping EMC out.) Didn't look much, but the laughter stopped and throughtful expressions appeared when people saw results better than (expensive) commercial equipment.
EC8010 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 1:49 pm
I've made a lot of test gear in steel cake tins and tobacco tins. (If it can keep stuff fresh, it's good for keeping EMC out.) Didn't look much, but the laughter stopped and throughtful expressions appeared when people saw results better than (expensive) commercial equipment.
nixiefreqq wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 1:20 pm
somehow I always expect you guys to show off your hybrid wafer and die wire bonding setups.
instead we see engine lathes and welders.
stone knives and bearskins.
You need the space for a tool, to be able to afford it (not so bad these days with a lot of good used equipment around), and an amount of work to justify it. You also need the skill to use it, and that can take a lot of practice.
About 15 years back I was queuing for the ferry from France and in the next line was a 1931 open top Rover. It had a brass badge on the side saying "The Duchess". I asked the lady sitting in it if she was The Duchess. She looked coy and said that was just the name of the car. Her husband came back (The Duke?) and I asked about the car. Vintage car owners always like to talk about their cars. So he told me about it. Then I asked him about spares and mentioned piston rings. He said they were fairly easy. You got some cast iron pipe of a particular sort, and then he described how it was machined into piston rings. It turned out he had another half dozen similar vintage cars and a fully equipped machine shop. I gathered he had a small business on the side, producing impossible to get spares for other vintage car owners. He was about retirement age.
Half a dozen vintage cars worth thousands, the room to keep them garaged and a fully equipped machine shop. He can't have been short of a bob or two.
sorry....forgot that according to the pictures in magazines, high tech electronic fabrication these days is done only by gray haired grannies or tiny Asian girls peering into microscopes.
Zenith wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 2:32 pm
You need the space for a tool, to be able to afford it (not so bad these days with a lot of good used equipment around), and an amount of work to justify it. You also need the skill to use it, and that can take a lot of practice.
Agreed with all of that, although buying a used machine tool is a lottery unless you can talk to the chap who has used it for the last ten years. Shortage of space is part of why Myfords have become so expensive; you can put a Myford (or smaller) in a converted loft or box room. Anything bigger needs a concrete floor and probably three-phase electricity. I first used a lathe at age of 14 at school; frightened the willies out of me. Forty years later, I was very nervous the first time I pulled the big red lever on my Colchester Bantam (3 HP motor). I'm still very cautious but my skill has improved significantly and I've enjoyed learning.
Sounds like your vintage car chap had found a way of making his hobby pay for itself.
But the key thing about a hobby, whether it be solder-slinging or swarf production is that it keeps the brain active. I looked around at work some years ago and wondered what many of them would do in retirement...
EC8010 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 27, 2025 10:26 pm
Robert, thank you so much for your post. I was well aware of the difference in torque ripple between single and three phase motors and was wondering whether my heavily tweaked Hobbymat lathe (bought new) would benefit from a three-phase motor, so I bought it a three-phase motor. Annoyingly, my static three-phase converter (used for the Colchester Bantam) won't go as low as 250W. Whoops! Internet searches didn't come up with anything useful regarding VFD drive and ripple. Any other comments you might have regarding VFDs and motors would be very welcome.
I'm happy to swap change wheels (Hobbymat) or pull levers (Bantam) to cut threads, but I can see the attraction of an electronic leadscrew. I have recently learned that it is a stupid idea to think that you can cut internal threads in 306 grade stainless steel; horrible stuff.
I suspect I am fully with you on your A and B points.
What size is your motor? I have a small VFD spare...
I'm a brit but SWMBO / XYL is a California girl.
