“Who’s That Working on That Lathe? It Looks Like Al Jolson!”

I stuck the old motor in the lathe and rigged it up so it would run. Man, I can’t believe how much caked-on grease is in that thing. I finally grabbed a can of brake part cleaner, hosed down the grease, and removed it with paper towels. Don’t worry; this wasn’t on moving parts. It was on the cabinet and so on. Places where it ended up because it flew there thirty years ago.

It stinks, too. When you hit the grease with the brake part cleaner, you get a disgusting compound that smells like fish.

I am really going through the hand cleaner.

I got the drum switch wired up and connected to the logic inputs. Now I have to program the VFD so it knows the switch exists. The braking works great. I won’t need a resistor. It stops in a second or two. I haven’t tried it with a chuck on it, but it’s my understanding that this is a pretty small braking load for this VFD.

The wires are all over the place, and if the lathe is grounded, it’s only through the bolts holding the VFD on. It’s all held together by those screw-on cap things that join wires. I made sure none of the wires could get near the gears or the chuck. When the new motor arrives, I’ll fix it up properly.

I’m trying to figure out how to measure the RPMs at the chuck. There is a belt setting that provides about 900 RPM. I guess I can use that setting, and then the lathe will run at 900 RPM at 60 Hz, so the RPM will always be about 15 times the frequency. That isn’t too hard to calculate. I’ll bet if I check around, I can find some kind of add-on doodad that will count RPMs electronically.

I think I’ll go work on the programming.