A little while ago I was looking at buying a VFD for a yet to be purchased wood lathe.
In searching on Ebay I came across a VFD and 3ph motor for sale which also included a 2 axis DRO with 2 glass scales (as sold by Hafco).
As I had plans to add a DRO to my metal lathe anyway, I placed a (very) late bid and was successful. I didn't fully understand all the capabilities of this (homemade) DRO and controller, it wasn't until I read the guy's website description properly that I got a feel for all this system can do.
Now that Christmas is out of he way I decided to allocate a few days to installing the DRO part, not altogether sure whether I'll install the VFD and 3ph motor on the metal lathe as well at this stage. Might just keep that for when I eventually find the right wood lathe.
Although it would be rather interesting to have fully integrated DRO and speed controller, time will tell which way I'll jump.
For now I concentrated on installing the DRO and glass scales and associated brackets which came with the system. As this came off an almost identical 9x20 lathe most of the figuring out work was already done for me.
First order of business was to remove the lathe from the bench it normally sits on so that I would have easy access to the back where most of this gear will go.
I also took the opportunity to replace the existing speed control pot as it was a rather clunky component with no definite start and stop points. Having done that the occasional flashing of the speed readout also disappeared.
Removed the splash guard and then the cross slide.


In searching on Ebay I came across a VFD and 3ph motor for sale which also included a 2 axis DRO with 2 glass scales (as sold by Hafco).
As I had plans to add a DRO to my metal lathe anyway, I placed a (very) late bid and was successful. I didn't fully understand all the capabilities of this (homemade) DRO and controller, it wasn't until I read the guy's website description properly that I got a feel for all this system can do.
Now that Christmas is out of he way I decided to allocate a few days to installing the DRO part, not altogether sure whether I'll install the VFD and 3ph motor on the metal lathe as well at this stage. Might just keep that for when I eventually find the right wood lathe.
Although it would be rather interesting to have fully integrated DRO and speed controller, time will tell which way I'll jump.
For now I concentrated on installing the DRO and glass scales and associated brackets which came with the system. As this came off an almost identical 9x20 lathe most of the figuring out work was already done for me.
First order of business was to remove the lathe from the bench it normally sits on so that I would have easy access to the back where most of this gear will go.
I also took the opportunity to replace the existing speed control pot as it was a rather clunky component with no definite start and stop points. Having done that the occasional flashing of the speed readout also disappeared.
Removed the splash guard and then the cross slide.


This was to enable me to drill and tap a couple of mounting holes for the Y axis on the cross slide.




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