Member postings for ronan walsh

Thanks kwil , i did forget about the setting up part.

I have a colchester master lathe which i run from a yaskawa vfd , it will run up to a 5 hp motor well and its a great bit of kit, recently i bought a tom senior milling machine and it is three phase 2hp.

Rather than buy a seperate vfd to run the mill is there any type of directional switch that i could use to switch the output from one machine to the other ? Not while the unit is powered up of course.

Is there not supposed to be a cover or guard over that belt ? Don't have the belt too tight or you will preload the bearings causing wear, have you put any dressing on the belt to stop it slipping squealing ?

I just bought a nice abwood vice for my milling machine, the jaws are 4" wide but any parallels sets i have seen are 6" wide , does anyone know who supplies 4" parallels ?

thank you michael.

Does anyone happen to know if clarkson collets fit dormer fastloc collet chucks ? I ask as i have a dormer chuck and only one collet , they appear very similar to clarkson ones but i don't have a clarkson one to compare it to.

You should join the yahoo colchester group and ask on there , very helpful when i was stuck for various work-arounds for my master.

I was turning up some bushes for a bsa motorcycle gearbox yesterday ,a sharp hss tool walked through it easily, the drilling was the same , good and sharp but the fine swarf builds up and binds the drill bit in the hole so regular pecking to keep it clear.

Is the machine sitting level and straight on the floor Eg no twist along the bed ? I have a colchester too and have looked into alignment, you can offset the tailstock left and right for taper turning and maybe this has been done and not returned to centre ? A test bar with morse taper to suit your tailstock are available for you to check alignment.

on my lathe (a master 2500) the headstock is also moveable left and right , if a length of 1" ground steel bar is held in the four jaw chuck and clocked up central , a dti can be held in the tool post and run along the length of the bar to test for misalignment.

Just a few ideas , i am sure there will be more experienced people along who will explain this better and better ideas than myself.

Upol acid etch from halfrauds ?

Are there plans available for that engine jasonb ? metric dimensioned would be great, does anyone publish them ?

i was thinking something like this 

http://hasbrouck.8m.com/eng5.htm

Edited By ronan walsh on 11/08/2012 23:31:20

Its more the lathe i have which limits what i can turn, i have a colchester master 2500 and trying to turn anything less than about 10mm is a bit of a pain. As for the mill , no its still three phase as i believe the 3 phase motor is a smoother and a vfd is as cheap as a replacement motor and has far more features. The travel it has in the z-axis is a bit limited and i might make a spacer that sits under main column giving a bit more room.

i am open to any ideas as regards the engine design, but something maybe 12"-18" long would be good.

Would anyone know of a larger sized stationary steam engine design that could be built from bar stock ? My machines are a bit too large for the very small designs that are commonly available , it needn't be a complicated design , something simple like a horizontal mill engine.

Thanks.

I bought a tom senior mill a few weeks back , it had been lying up for about a year, had a fine coating of light rust on all exposed bare surfaces. I used coarse steel wool and jizer first , but found plastic pot scourers from tesco and the jizer to be far better at removing the rust and caked on dirt from the paint too.

these scourers are green come in packs of 5 or 6 and are cheap and effective.

Thanks for the trouble everyone has gone to on this , I have successfully managed to delete the wiring that was no longer required and the contactor block, the wiring comes directly from the rail on the bottom of the board, into the 240v-24v transformer on the top of the board, the power (24v) then runs back down to the rail connections , i didn't have to touch the actual electronic pcb's at all thankfully.

It all works fine now and i am very happy not to have to fork out for a new motor or vfd.

One piece of the contactor is remaining , i didn't know if i should remove it or not , advise please. Its in the last couple of picture i have just uploaded.

I finally got the power feed working , i have upped two photos showing how, one of the three lives ran from L3 to L on the connections at the bottom. i disconnected this and connected a single phase live to the L connection on the right (beige coloured block) the neutrals are common as are the earths so these were connected also. With power applied the motor worked but only after the contactor in the second last picture was pushed in manually.

The motor isn't that fast running , even with the rapid feed button held down , but hey it works and the limit switch mounted on the front of the table works perfectly too.

So if anyone can tell me how do i get around having to push in the contactor manually ? can i do away with this component completely ?

Thanks all .

thanks les , i'll contact denfords for a wiring diagram, they do have some drawings because they bought tom senior's in the early 80's and i will also ask over on the yahoo group for senior millers.

Thanks les, i should have said that this machine came from a community college and is covered in safety switches , one on nearly every door or hatch and a massive emergency stop foot operated button on the base. There is a lot of wiring from these switches to the board. I may remove them as they don't serve any real purpose.

if anyone can steer me on how to get this table motor running with the original buttons and controls i'd be very happy.

Yes michael ,thats the one, can i simply connect the live and neutral single phase to this ? , there is a contactor block immediately below this which has three phases connected to it , can this be isolated ? Surely its for the main drive motor which is now not connected to this board as its connected to a vfd.