Emco Compact 5 cnc

Hi from Ireland.

I am retrofitting an old ex school Emco compact 5 CNC lathe. It has the original 3 jaw Emco 80mm chuck but with only 1 jaw.

Can anyone help me source replacement jaws and spindle motor and vfd.

Also can anyone recommend a replacement half horse 3 phase spindle motor and vfd.

I have the new controls and steppers fitted too.

Thanks in advance

Michael

If you want a 3-phase induction motor and VFD then from my experience it would be well worth contacting Newton-Tesla. But didn't the original have a 440W DC motor? If so an induction motor might be hard to squeeze in.

Unfortunately the lathe has taken a battering in the school. A lot ripped out in the back panel andother missing bits.

Hi Michael

A suitable motor would be flange mounted 4 pole 3 phase running from a VFD that can be mounted in the original cabinet with control from a front fascia mounted control to give stop/start/speed control.

If you mostly run at 3000 spindle speed you may want to use a 2 pole motor but that will not be so suitable for lower speeds.

Motor .37kW 3 phase 220/380v Delta connected
Frame size 63 (63mm base to shaft centre)
B14 Flange mount

Emgee

Emco produced and sold a couple of different versions of 3 jaw chucks for the Compact 5 designed to fit either your cnc or my manual C5 since they both used the exact same spindle and chuck mounting Michael. So it depends on just which chuck you have. If my memory isn't faulty for what Emco called them? The much more expensive chucks were what they were referred to as heavy duty and noticeably quite a bit thicker than those lighter standard versions. I've no idea if each of those standard or HD chucks used the exact same jaws or not though. And they didn't just have one set of jaws, there were two matched sets for holding larger or smaller parts either by the OD or ID. High precision chuck manufacturing is fairly specialized. So I've always suspected Emco may have had one of the better European chuck manufacturer's produce chucks for all of there lathe sizes and just had there own Emco name added to them. Bison, Rohm or some other manufacturer possibly? And as far as I know, none of the other well known lathe brands produced a smaller sized lathe with that same 3 or 4 cap screws through the chuck mounting system that Emco used on these C5's. But I could also be incorrect. I do remember that chuck mounting design does have it's own German DIN designation, so it is something recognized as a spindle standard.

Even then, I think it would be highly doubtful if you ever found any used jaws that would or could produce the same OEM concentricity without doing a very good job preloading and re-grinding those jaws to work with your own scroll and jaw slots in the chuck body you already have. Mine would do at or under .001" run out at any dimension I checked. So they were very good chucks. There is a small niche business in Europe who sometimes have Emco C5 machines and accessories. Try nielsmachines.com/en He also has a Youtube channel showing anything he has for sale as well as all his older videos. Doing a YT search for the channel name Neils Vrijlandt should find it. Separate chuck jaws could still be quite tough to find even through him, and a complete used chuck would probably be easier. But even good condition and used, any C5 chuck with both sets of jaws won't be exactly cheap since those accessories are now much harder to find and not all that common. And Niels certainly knows that. Fwiw and for pricing reference purposes for anything you might find, just over 30 yrs ago and in Canadian dollars, those HD 3 jaw chucks were right around $450.

Both the manual and cnc C5 also had a 4 jaw scroll chuck that were offered with that same heavy duty designation, again even more expensive (just over $500) than the HD 3 jaw, a lighter semi steel 4 jaw independent chuck, ($125) a cast iron face plate ($65) a ESX 25 collet chuck and collets. Because of the high price, I also suspect those collets might have been manufactured by possibly Schaubin. Although the accuracy of mine certainly reflects what they cost. But making your own face plate or even a ER 25 or larger series collet chuck isn't out of the question. And at that same 30 + years ago time period, the Emco collet chuck and a full set of the collets were almost $900.

Those original single ph C5 motors were also expensive. I had to have mine replaced under warranty and I believe the supplier told me it was around $800. At the time a complete but without any options manual C5 was around $1200. I'm using a VFD to supply 3 ph power to my BP clone mill. Today that really is the best way to go since 3 ph is so much smoother and a VFD allows far better and vastly superior motor control options. It does depend on what you plan on doing with yours though. For the usual part sizes you'd use a lathe of this size for, then a 1/2 HP motor should be fine. I'm also pretty sure Emco's single ph motors used an European metric standard face mounting. But I've no idea if that exact same standard is used on the 3 ph motors as well or not. An industrial electrical supplier should be able to tell you for sure. Most industrial 3 ph motor websites will usually have line drawings giving all the important dimensions, so a bit of research on those would also tell you if you can match the motor shaft size and bolt hole locations to the C5 motor mounting plate and it's drive pulley shaft size.

For diameters of 3"- to it's full 5" capacity and at lower rpm's, then you may still need to drop your depths of cut and feed rates a bit, or just keep and use the step pulleys you have and do a manual belt change like I do with my mill when I want lower rpm and full torque during longer periods of operation that would have less motor cooling. But these are still small and very light weight machines. One thing I can say, my lathe was totally transformed after I bolted it down to a 1" thick X 27" long X 13 1/2" wide or 25 X 685 X 343 mm thick steel plate the full length of the whole lathe and the same width as the chip pan.That added about 95 lbs/ 43 kgs to the lathe and made it much more accurate and quiet. And extremely important, the bed does need to be properly leveled and adjusted until it will cut truly parallel parts the full length of the bed. Not only does any bed twist produce tapers on the parts, but it won't drill on size and will also bore tapered holes. Another addition I'd highly recommend. I believe in the UK there called Bristol Handles? Over here there known as adjustable or ratcheting handles. I bought two metric threaded one's that match the threads Emco used on the C5 tail stock for locking it to the bed and for clamping the quill. That was a great and very user friendly improvement that still looks like something Emco might have have done but didn't.

Edited By Pete on 26/09/2023 01:29:56

I would just use the motor that is on it... I have.. With a decent drive - they work great..

If the original motor is missing if in the UK replacement motor available here **LINK**

Listed as B34 Frame 63

Emgee