New VFD plus 1 HP Motor for Mini Lathe or any lathe

[jjr2001]

Nice build and setup JR! The jack shaft is an interesting approach and gives opportunity to change pulley's if desired, although the VFD will minimize that. Nice find on the Hoffman NEMA 4 box for $30, I assume it's old stock or lightly used. Would you be so kind and provide a link to the motor and VFD from Amazon.

Thanks for sharing this build with us!

PJ

Hi PJ, here are the links to the motor and VFD that I bought for my lathe:

https://www.amazon.com/Teco-Variable...70_&dpSrc=srch


Nice thing about the VFD is that it converts 120vac single phase to 230 3 phase..

Motor:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Not that I would ever use the full 1 HP from this setup but I bought what was available.
A real 1/2 HP 3 phase motor would be fine but I did not find one that would take up less space than my monster motor.
The motor is 3450 rpm which is less than the 5000 rpm original motor. I have also added an almost 2 to 1 reduction.
I think the speed is about right. I never ran the lathe past half speed with the old motor anyway. Now I have
a lot of torque that I was missing from the original setup.

Back in the day a motor was rated in real horse power not "peak horse power".
I am pretty sure that the 1/2 hp motor that was on my lathe was 1/2 peak hp.
Of course you can never get 1/2 hp from such a motor. Well I guess you can
but it only happens just as all the smoke leaves the motor......LOL.

Cheers, JR