WARCO WM-250 lathe family and WM16 mill

Rik was there no circuit diagram in the manual? there is for my 280.

Thanks Jason - of course there is a schematic in my manual. Sometimes the obvious is not so obvious. Age perhaps?

Rik

Rik

In case this helps - its for the 'new' WM250V inverter drive model..

Regards

Allan.

Thanks Allan - I'll file that under future/maybe!

Rik

Hi Rik,
Does your lathe have a DC motor and speed controller or does it have a 3 phase motor and VFD as the schematic posted by Allan ? Can you post the poor picture of the schematic that you said you had of the schematic on the back of your lathe ? It may be good enough to see if it is the same as the one Allan posted.

Les.

Hello Les - Mine is the old type DC motor and variable speed controller. Because my pic of the circuit diagram was so indistinct I have wiped it some time ago but I can tell you that it was different from Allans diagram. From now on I feel I am at the mercy of WARCO.

GHMe

Rik

Having in the last few weeks taken delivery of my repaired lathe from WARCO who had fitted a replacement speed control board I was looking forward this afternoon to running it up and doing a little work.

All went well for about twenty minutes albeit with the start button making its usual stuttering and false starts. No worries though as long as the thing worked - and then - I pressed the start button and the breaker tripped on the consumer unit in the workshop. Oh no, not again pleeease!

Tried starting again six times and each try the breaker tripped. By now I was beginning to feel slightly sick that my very expensive repair was for nothing.

Next thing I tried was to plug lathe into the house circuit and tried again. Press start button, chuck revolves briefly then lathe dies. What the four and a half is going on I thought.

Decided to check front panel fuse, it had blown. Replaced it and tried again. Same thing, another blown fuse and once again for luck, another blown fuse.

Replaced fuse, disconnected lathe from house circuit and plugged it back into workshop circuit. Pressed start button and the breaker tripped. Checked front fuse - it was still OK. Repeated several times with same result.

Apart from calling WARCO on Monday I am once again up a gum tree with a duff lathe again.

With the WM250 V-F out of its twelve month warranty but still under two years old from new I am reluctant to spend yet another £277 (or maybe more) on another repair which may or may not work.

Anyone want to buy a s/crap lathe?

Rik

Check the motor brushes for sticking in the holders and clean out any carbon dust around the brushes as this will cause tracking and will blow the trip, suggest checking and cleaning brushes annually, known fault from personal experience especially if you have an old current operated trip like mine.

Thanks for that Richard, I'll check the brushes this afternoon. My consumer unit was only installed four years ago so I guess that should not count as old.

Rik

You seem to be falling for the old myth of the 12 month warranty. That was scrapped many years ago, although the retailers often want you to forget that. In the modern world, it's only in North America that that 12 month warranty still has currency. Here in the UK, AFAIK we have something up to 6 years, depending on the product. I certainly wouldn't expect to be repairing / replacing a machine tool after 12 months.

You should be more robust with Warco. If necessary, contact the local trading standards for advice. Warco should be talking about how they will repair or replace the faulty parts. Certainly sounds like a manufacturing or design fault which they are liable for, unless they can show you have abused or modified the product.

You should also post here to let us know how you get on. If they don't offer decent after sales support and / or products that are reliable, we should all be warned.

Murray

Thanks Murray, I have noted your advice with considerable interest. I will certainly post here to let you and other interested parties know how things proceed from this point.

Rik

I'd certainly be interested to hear how you get on, I just ordered £2k's worth of lathe from them yesterday at the show.....

Hope you resolve your situation to your satisfaction....

Edited By John Rudd on 10/05/2015 16:36:37

I’d have thought this is very much down to Warco to sort out – as mentioned things have to be good for 5 or 6 years (or a reasonable period of time) and they have also charged you a lot of money for not doing anything and a fix that didn’t work. I’ll be very much interested to see how they respond, and it will very much govern where I get my band saw from!

David

I also agree with Muzzer, European law is such that the product has to last a reasonable time, so a £10 camera wouldn't be expected to last but a £2K camera would have a reasonable expectation to last years.

Steve

I wonder if we can draw Warco's attention to this?. After all they are a site sponsor...

Neil?

One thing you may need to do is get an independent engineers report on the failure of the lathe and an assesment of condition etc.

My wifes HP laptop failed recently after just under 2 years, contacted the retailer who tried to tell me it was HP's responsibility, after putting them straight on UK consumer law etc, they asked that I submit an engineers report, cost me £25 but once they had that, they paid up in full including the £25 for the report,. The report stated that the laptop was in good condition , no signs of misuse and the fault was a result of premature component failure not commensurate with the age of the laptop. It this sort of information you need in order to pursue a claim under Sale of goods act if the goods are older than six months, you have up to 6 years in UK (5 in Scotland) in which to pursue a claim through the courts if the retailer fails or refuses to repair, replace or compensate adequately.

Update. The second repair in a year has been made to my WM250 VF and WARCO are bringing it back to me tomorrow. I have enquired as to what they had to do to put it right and was told that the speed control board was damaged and had to be replaced.

So this will be the 2nd replacement speed control board in less than a year. Right now my remaining concern is that the reason for these boards failing has not been identified (it appears that WARCO do not employ anyone with sufficient diagnostic skills to pinpoint the root problem).

I am of course very pleased that they have done what they have done but from now on I have been told to only switch the lathe on at its lowest speed setting (which is something I have always done anyway).

With the lathe being away for five weeks I will be glad to have it back again.

Rik (fingers crossed)

Rick – can I ask if Warco charged you for the second repair?

David

Certainly David. This second repair is not being charged. Or to be strictly accurate, no mention of charges have been made.

Rik

Rik, if it's any consolation I always start my lathe & mill initially from lowest speed, then it's ok to start from where I was, may be it's something to do with all that electrickery stuff that needs to warm things up initially, maybe the board doesn't like being kicked up the a*** with full voltage on start up, when I finish I always set the speed control back to zero... just my methodology ... always wanted an 'ology, ...where've I heard that before .

George.