Lathe pulleys and setup

Hi,

Just purchased a myford ML 4 lathe and Its really nice, it has no chuck yet but I want to get the thing set up. Ive got a .7 hp squirrel (2800rpm) cage capacitor start / run induction motor, and had purchased a cheap pulse width modulation circuit from China for something else, I removed the cap from the motor and have used the circuit with it and it works ok although not as much speed control as I'd like.

Anyway Ive got a spare washing machine motor I can use if needed.

Now I need to buy and set up some pulleys but Don't have a clue about that stuff, In an ideal world I'd have a single phase VFD device and buy a 3phase motor, and have a direct drive system if possible to save space and big dangerous moving pulleys. but I read that is not preffered as you loose lots of torque without the pulleys.

So I'm on a tight budget and want to know best to get my lathe up and running, its really frustrating knowing I could make pulleys if my lathe was up and running, I am really tight with cash and don't like the idea of spending £11+ per pulley from ebay and have to buy a whole bunch of them because I have the wrong size / design etc.

Are there any good ebooks or websites that you can reccommend?

I remember basic pulley physics from school but although I have a garage full of tools I have little in the way of steel box section, angle iron, shafts, bearings, etc.

Welcome Charlie, I currently own an ml4 lathe ,the set I'm running at the moment consists of ,a Hoover motor running at 1425rpm and producing half horse power. The pulley on the motor is 50mm in diameter on the small pulley and 110mm on the larger diameter pulley ,I run this set up predominantly on the 50mm pulley but run my ml4 with an ml7 countershaft system , the pulley diameter is 205mm on the ml7 pulley ,hope this helps .

It really does help thank you.