No Motor, No Work

I feel like I’m stuck today. For reasons not worth going into, I may be farming out the work on the air conditioning hole in the garage, so I’m not installing the unit right now. And the motor for my lathe is still en route, so I’m not installing that. And since I can’t use the lathe, I’m not learning machining.

I guess I should get off my butt and rig the lathe up so it’s ready to run as soon as the motor arrives. But that would take character.

I made a nice support panel for the VFD yesterday. I had a strange piece of flat steel scrap on hand, so I cut it down with the plasma cutter and put some holes in it. There are two completely pointless bolts projecting from the back of the lathe headstock, plus an empty threaded hole, so I decided to use these to hold up the panel. I bought a nice cobalt 3/8″ drill bit and made a couple of holes for the large bolt, using Dykem and a carpenter’s square and a scribe in order to locate them. Unfortunately, I didn’t line the holes up quite as well as I could have, so the panel leans to the right by a few degrees. I also made four holes for the VFD itself.

I cleaned the panel off and painted it to match the lathe. Or so I thought. At the hardware store, I tried to find a nice flat grey spray enamel, and I found one with a likely looking color on the cap. When I used it, it turned out to be silvery. Oh well.

I can always make a new panel later. I have a lot of flat scrap. This would be much easier with a decent drilling machine, like a BRIDGEPORT. I think I’ll wait. Alternatively, I could open one of the holes up to let the panel swing into an upright position, and then I could make a third hole and put a bolt into the vacant headstock hole to line things up.

As it is, it will look a little funny, but it will work. The VFD will be at a very convenient height, and I’ll have the drum switch lever right below it, for forward and reverse.

I am greatly disappointed in the way the seller treated me, but the lathe’s moving parts appear to be in excellent shape, so once I have it running, it should give great service. I should not have had to buy a new motor, but I think I’m better off without the vari-speed drive I was expecting. The seller offered me a free headstock casting because of the two cast iron corners that are broken off of the old one, but my guess is that the breakage is due to a design flaw. After all, it happened in two nearly identical spots. I think a better answer is to make steel caps to fit over the gaps and run bolts through them into the casting. It will hide the damage, and I won’t have to worry about having this problem again. If it’s a design flaw, the new headstock could end up just like this one, so the aggravation of installing it would be wasted. Also, I wonder how easy it is to remove and reinstall a headstock. For all I know, there are critical measurements that have to be made, which I can’t make here at home.

Man, I wish that air conditioner was installed.