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The power feed showed up this afternoon so that will be the next little project. I think I have the handles and controls figured out so once the PF is running I'll make some piece of steel smaller than it is now.
The seller was asking $5k for the machine, I was told it only has about 10 hours use and I believe it. My travel cost to get it was almost $1k but I'm happy with the machine.
Is the one you're looking at 220volt? If so a VFD would be the route I would go instead of replacing the motor with single phase. The VFD is a bit of work to setup but being able to tweak the rpm to exactly what is needed is well worth the trouble.
And welcome to the forum, you may want to introduce yourself in "New Member Intros" on the main page.
What's part of the country are you in?
The PF is installed and working fine.
Its the generic Vevor model from Amazon. There was almost no drama except that I couldn't get the brass gear to engage with the drive gear when mounting to the right hand side of the table. Turns out that the screw is built different on each side, one side has a longer shoulder than the other so I had to 180 the screw to get the short shoulder on the right side of the table.
The PF fits on the short shoulder side of the screw for this machine, it took a while to figure this out. I noticed that with the original bearing housings, the long shoulder side has two bearings while the short shoulder side only has one bearing.
After that the PF mounted as per the very limited instructions.
The only other issue was the large ball end of the handle was making contact with the PF housing, solved this with a spacer to move it out a bit and now all is good.
Not sure how much I like the handles, might need to build a new set of "handwheels".
I didn’t get whacked by one but as soon as I saw it flailing around near the PF controls my spidey sense started tingling.
I had seen the solid hand wheels with the folding handle on the H & W Machine site and then what looked to be the same on Aliex (far east copy?) for considerably less so I picked one up for the X Axis beside the PF.
After using it for a short time I found I liked the hands-on feel & control of the wheel so much more than the traditional style that I swapped out the other X and the Y too. Minor spacer bushing Fab needed.
@YotaBota With the folding handle on the Y stowed it does provide added protection at certain table Z adjustments too…
Yes there is the safety mode classic ball end style but personally I don't care for the sprung 'push in to engage' feel of them. There is also the frisbee disc with retracting handle style, didn't really care for that either. So yes I am living dangerously. When I power feed I try to leave my hand on the lever, back from the crunch zone. When I'm hand cranking which seems to be 70% of time, I turn PF power off. Its just one of those things to remember to do - like check the knee lock is disengaged before you PF the table up/down (he says with 99.7% success rate).
I can see three new handwheels in my future. Not planning to power the Y or Z, I didn't find the need on the other mill but time will tell.
As @Tecnico mentioned, I find the wheel has more fine control as well and there isn't the big ball pinch point. Plus I still have a bunch of rivets left from the last set of handwheels I built.
I'm sure there is a better mechanical solution to get the best of both worlds. if I recall, the floating handle has a spring that pushes the handle out as default so PF does cannot spin it. But the downside is in manual mode, you have to first push it in before turning. That's OK for cranking but I really despise it for making minute adjustments or trying to hit a target. I think if the handle had something like a tension knob to either engage or disengage safety it would be better. I find I'm either in PF mode, usually for roughing or repetitive, or manual mode. When in PF mode its basically stroking that axis back & forth while & adjusting one of the other axis, so no real reason to be operating the same handle. On my RF-45 mill I jus removed the handle altogether on PF end, that's another option.
