Just starting out

Hi! I'm an electronic engineer by profession but I've always had an interest in things mechanical, and have now started building a home workshop. I bought a Raglan Little John mk2 a few years back which (along with a pair of 3D printers) has helped me make a number of parts to fix things around the house, including several of my kids' toys.

After a couple of years of watching and waiting I've just bought an Alexander Master Toolmaker (Deckel FP1 copy) to go with it. It arrives tomorrow, hopefully. It'll need a fair bit of work to get it going because I have no 3-phase supply, but that's ok, with a young family around I can be in no rush!

I love steam railways and would probably one day like to build a model locomotive, but for the time being my main interest is in repairing and improving other things that I own, including of course the lathe and mill!

Hi Andy & welcome from another dabbler. Good luck with any projects you decide to do.

Steve.

Welcome!

On here you#ll find all sorts of things going on, clocks, loco, steam battery, or IC, road engines, stationary engines, aero engines,tools., cars motorcycles You name it, some one does it

Whereaboiuts are you, in case you hit a problem and someone local can help?

Howard

Thanks both!

Ah location, I knew I'd missed something out. Not far from York, UK.

Welcome Andy, it sounds like a serious setup! I have an Alexander 3A but not used it in 3D yet. I used a cheap inverter to run the 3 ph electrics on mine. (I'm no electrician but one of the other members on here was VERY helpful).

I don't know how fay away I am from you, I live near Mansfield.

Brian

Just to be clear The Master Toolmaker is a milling machine while the 3A is a die sinker (3D engraver).

It has been over 40 years since I used a Master Toolmaker. Dull memory seems to think they had a two speed motor ? If so a little harder to run from inverter ?

Chris, your memory is not so dull, mine came with a monster 2 speed motor as well, which could not be run with an inverter, but may have been runable with my phase converter. I use that on my 3ph Bantam which has the original 2 speed motor still on it. However I wanted to run both machines at the same time, so went for a new modern smaller 240v 3ph motor, which reduced the footprint by a couple of inches, and an inverter package from Newton Tesla, and this works really well.

Chris Gunn

My thoughts exactly. I'm considering a phase converter but for less money I could get a new (240V single speed) three phase motor and decent VFD. If I do go that route I'll repurpose the existing speed switch to signal the VFD to preconfigured speeds. That way it'll work exactly the same, and I like the idea of that for some reason.

It also has the 6000rpm high-speed head so I'll need another VFD for that but even then I think it'll save me money, and buy me a soft-start and infinitely variable speed as a bonus.

Incidentally (and I'm aware I should probably start another thread for this if it starts to get too machine-specific) does anyone know what weight of gearbox oil it takes? Mine's been drained for shipping. The manual I found online says it takes 2½ pints of "gear oil", which is not exactly a specification!