It's alive again

Dan Dubeau

Ultra Member
I just finally finished getting my mill wired up and running after a long slumber.

Mill1.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/UtjBewYl.mp4

I've owned this mill for I think about 12 years now, and aside from briefly running it off of a 3 ph generator for a couple jobs after I got it, it's never ran again until now (but I've moved it 3 times....). I've collected all the big ticket items to build a 1ph 240-600 3ph rotary phase converter over the past few months, and was chipping away at doing that until a couple weeks ago when Rauce posted he was parting his excello out that was rewound for 230v and came with VFD. A day trip to Hamilton later I had the entire head with VFD, and ended up just swapping out the backgear and VS casting from his to mine, as my VS sheave was a little worn out and loud..... https://i.imgur.com/3VuDXjfl.mp4

I ran some wire out to the garage that week, then got pretty busy at work trying to finish up some projects so I could finally take a week off and haven't had time to get back to it until now. Pretty happy now finally having a working manual mill again after all these years. And will come in very handy as I get back on some big fabrication projects that are too large for the Tormach.

Now I have to finish cleaning up around it, and putting that corner of the shop back together. Running the wire required me to tear down all the stuff, shelves and bins off the wall. I still want to build the phase converter eventually so I can run my shaper though. I've owned it longer than the Excello (it was the first metal machine tool I bought) and have never ran it here.......But I might pull it out and see about converting that to 230v and a vfd now too.

I'm going to build a proper enclosure for the VFD and run some control switches over to the mill, but for now screwed to the wall will do. I have a lot of cleanup and reorganizing to do before I run it much anyway.

Thanks again Rauce. It runs perfect.
 
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