Warco Economy Mill

As i am needing a few things done and researching more on these generic mill's i thought about doing a few upgrades.

instead of getting the pulley replaced might go 3 phase with vfd and single belt with matching spindle pulley. That should bypass the column.i have seen a few other guys do the same and saves me changing belts.

Most of the time tbh it will be used as a drill press and have capabilities of milling when needed to save on space.

Thanks for the extra info some of which i have found and other's i have not.

Edited By jay g on 07/09/2023 12:11:36

Edited By jay g on 07/09/2023 12:12:22

You sound like you have a plan, but look carefully at motor spec' and ratio's carefully if you want to retain a useful slow-speed milling capability with just one direct pulley-pair..

It certainly is worth the money, but getting the missing parts could take some time. I would also look out for a longer bed, the similar machine at the museum has a bed with 500mm movement in the X axis. There are many ways of moving the head up and down if you have the imagination and will to tackle it.

Looks to be older than mine, which is 20+ years old, and a slightly different design.

But as long as it does what is needed!

The bracket for the intermediate pulley is cast iron and can crack if overtightened.. I put lerge washers under the bolt heads to spread the load more.

The RF25 appeared in many colour schemes for a variety of importers.

Rong Fu might even be able to supply the pulley, bearings and bracket, perhaps?

Howard

If it's any help I bought exactly the same machine, albeit with an Alpine badge on it, and still have it in my shed, used regularly. It's got its shortcomings as a mill, but it makes an excellent drilling machine.

If you want photo's of how the pulley idler is arranged, also the crank and lifting rack let me know and I can add some photo's to my existing album. This album presently shows a simple mod' I carried out to improve the belt tensioning arrangement.

I'm in West Gloucestershire - nearly South Wales - if you want to visit and take measurements etc you're welcome.

I've changed the motor to 3 phase with VSD which avoids a lot of belt changes, but I wouldn't like to forfeit the low speed/high torque capability of a two stage belt driven reduction.

In your position I'd certainly go 3 phase motor and VFD. Probably similar price overall to getting the mechanical parts after selling the old single phase motor. Well worth getting two more pulleys and arranging a two speed drive.

My old Chester square column mill with a factory (or importer) fitted VFD arrangement had two speed ranges with a decent overlap 125 to 1400 and 250 to 2800 rpm. Which worked very well indeed. Large overlap meant I pretty much never needed to shift the belt mid job but when I needed plenty of power at lower speeds the motor didn't run out of torque.

Objectively a bit less overlap and a bottom speed nearer 50 rpm might have been even better.

I fitted a knob with twelve numbered segment skirt to the potentiometer (from RS Components). A calibration table matching number to speed for both ranges made it easy to set there right one.

Clive