Motor rebuilders? Motor replacement?

Friend of mine at work's husband got a little old European lathe. Its built like a little tank complete with tracer and onboard coolant. Its probably a 10x30 or similar. Its a little guy but massively heavy in a complete cast chassis.


Long story short they wired up their static phase converter wrong, incoming line to the floating phase, and popped the caps in it as well as said there was some smoke from the motor. The motor makes very little torque and can easily be stalled with a cutting tool as well as makes some bad noises like a stepper motor with a bad set of winds. Im guessing the motor is toast too. Gets quite hot with just a few minutes of unloaded running. Im having him ohm out the winds and see whats up.

Ive never seen a multi-speed motor that uses Y, delta and a //Y configuration for speeds (Im a noobie learning from the wizards here!). Are these types of motors readily available? Anyone with a good rep to rebuild it for him?

Motor face plate:

Is the motor integral with the machine? I.E. is it "special", or just plain jane foot mount? Finding a small 3 speed replacement would most likely be difficult, I'm assuming it uses that instead of a back gear, so going with a plain common 3ph motor and vfd would be the next best solution. I'd be interested in seeing the lathe too, I've been wanting a small one with a taper attachment.

thermite said:

Rebuild is only temporary if 'the plan' is to f**k-it up AGAIN with a static "converter-not-really-they-are-not" kludge.

Walloon side of Belgian made. Or so they were at the time:

Ateliers de Constructions Electriques de Charleroi - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Show us the REST of where it has to FIT.. and someone may have a suggestion as to how to get useful power to the spindle.

A more common single-speed motor + VFD to support other speeds AND 1-P conversion to 3-P powering, for example.

Click to expand...

I forgot about my post here!

I suggested a VFD but they already had the phase a matic.


I will see if I can get pics. Easier for them to send pics than me drive out there just for a photo or two.

dalmatiangirl61 said:

Is the motor integral with the machine? I.E. is it "special", or just plain jane foot mount? Finding a small 3 speed replacement would most likely be difficult, I'm assuming it uses that instead of a back gear, so going with a plain common 3ph motor and vfd would be the next best solution. I'd be interested in seeing the lathe too, I've been wanting a small one with a taper attachment.

Click to expand...

It is a foot mount. The stupid heavy door attached to a plate comes open and releases tension on the belt drive.

I'll see what I can do for overall pics too. It's a neat little lathe but fairly tired and dirty. They have been doing good cleaning it but it needs some more TLC.

Sorry this took a while but I finally got pics from them.

This is the little lathe we are trying to breathe life back into!

Deerhurst said:

Sorry this took a while but I finally got pics from them.

This is the little lathe we are trying to breathe life back into!

Click to expand...

if you are still interested
post a pic of the connection diagram tag
it sounds suspiciously like a consequent pole winding for the two speeds
and a single winding for the third speed which could either be high or low
quite common for old machines before VFDs were around
that motor will be very expensive and very hard to find
amps are listed as 8.1 / 6.6 / 5.9
HP is 3 / 2 / 1.2

since it is EU or somewhere else i recommend a single speed motor and a VFD
the two will be much much cheaper than a new 3 spd motor
however it will likely take quite a lot of conversion for the controls to change to vfd

on the other hand you may be able to find a rewind shop that is familiar with that type of motor
and that might be cheaper if they can make it 60Hz and 240V instead of 220V 50Hzz

keep in mind that the wild leg of the converter should not be connected to any control systems or other low voltage wiring
which brings up using 120/240V/60Hz on 110/220V/50Hz coils in the contactors, but it will most likely work fine

Lathe looks a little like a Hembrug which is a very high end Dutch ? machine. Static converter is a horrible idea with that type of motor. I went through a similar experience with my Smart Brown three speed motor. Two separate windings with a Dahlander connection that drops two poles out of one winding to create the top speed. If there are gears or a step pulley in the head, go with a good three phase motor and a vfd. I replaced my three speed with a Vector duty motor ( Baldor IDNM, Marathon Black or Blue Max, etc ) that can be run at 120 hz. replacing the motor is very expensive and rewinding it is at least as much. Few shops want to deal with multispeed motors.

The down sides to a lathe that relies on a multispeed motor are lack of speed choices at the high end, and the cost of Plan B if the motor is bad. If you have gears or pulleys, you can avoid the need for that type of motor and be happier with the results. As stout as that lathe is you could upsize the motor a little and make it even better than original.

Dave

I would agree with Dave, I assume in addition to the 3 speed motor that there was some other form of speed adjustment for the spindle speed. Using a 1750 RPM inverter/vector type motor you will be able to have the same performance (actually much better) then the stock motor. You would run the motor to 120 Hz for a 3500 RPM maximum speed and would be in constant Hp from 60-120 Hz, you would be in constant torque down to basically 0 speed below 60Hz, performance would be much better than what you have. I would replace the stock motor with a 3 Hp TENV, which are very compact in size and there are no cooling limitations. As Dave mentioned, Marathon BlackMax/BlueMax series, Baldor/Rilance/ABB IDNM ZDMN series as well as some other versions, other brands like Lincoln and Teco also have their versions. I looked around and I found the Lincoln 3 HP 230/460V 1755 RPM 184TC Frame AC Electric Motor LM33492 which I have used on a number of lathes and is a top performer at a very reasonable price in the link below. This would be far less expensive then trying to rewind the stock motor. If going with a replacement motor you would need to run it off of a VFD, so you need to factor that into the upgrade. You could have the stock motor checked at a motor shop, but at the end of the day you would be better off replacing it and with a VFD you would run it off of single phase.

That lathe is a Hembrug and has a four step pulley inside the head. Mark's motor suggestion is ideal and a great price. That particular motor would give you enough of a speed range that swapping the pulleys ( which is easy on the Hembrug ) would be needed much ;less often than if a multispeed motor was used.

Those are wonderful machines if condition is good. I only see one or two come up every year here in the US. Almost bought one just to look it over when I found a CVA instead. Dave