30-04-2013, 04:04 PM
Hi,
Many thanks Colin for your kind comments. The only house calls I'm doing is to call our bungalow names because it always wants work doing on it after a winter and by the time the work is done it's winter again; this means the things I want to do like interesting projects are always done in a cold black hole. Today I've started to access the foundations of our bungalow as I need to install flood defenses.
Thanks David and how true. It's nice to knock off for a pot of tea when I want one. A huge bonus is that I can get stuck into a job now without a pager driving me mad as it used to do at work. The only pressure is as stated above; I try to get so many jobs done during our brief warmer weather and end up tiring myself out.
Excellent news on the Clarke lathe front though; the lathe is up and running like a good un. This morning I ordered a pair of SPZ 512 drive belts; these are cheap enough so I bought a spare both only costing £7.20 inc. I collected them after dinner.
Assembly and alignment was easy enough and without drama; it was wonderful to put the lathe in motion knowing if anything blew up it wouldn't be another cheap flimsy Clarke circuit board.
As you rightly say Refugee this new servo motor is more powerful than the original it is also very much larger having it's controls attached. At 400W it is quite a lot more powerful than the 300W original motor. I need to sort out a starting mechanism to operate the starting lever on the new motor allowing the motor to be locked "on" but compared to the amount of work already carried out I'm confident this won't trouble me too much.
The lathe sounds sweet enough and I'm hopeful this new modification will give years of trouble free running? I was careful not to start messing around with the original lathe which has not been altered in any way; I've used original mounting points or convenient holes in the casting to mount both the counter-shaft assembly and the new motor mounting framework. The counter-shaft assembly is attached using four 6mm set screws; washers and nuts making a very neat job but I confess it took quite a lot of initial sorting out; as with most things once completed they look so easy.
I didn't expect this lathe to let me down the way it did but I've now arranged it so that even if the servo motor fails I can attach a 3 phase motor and VFD so this Clarke can now behave or it is in trouble because I'm on its case.
A new OEM Clarke circuit board costs around £130 but I must have spent around £200 on the upgrade; it's possible had I bought a new circuit board other items would also require replacing and I know however many circuit boards I would install it would only be a matter of time before I destroyed each one. I didn't expect having to go to all this time trouble in order to do a bit of metal turning but Bron kindly bought me this lathe as a present so I want to keep and use it; I don't normally break my toys but it's been an interesting diversion.
Kind regards, Col.
Many thanks Colin for your kind comments. The only house calls I'm doing is to call our bungalow names because it always wants work doing on it after a winter and by the time the work is done it's winter again; this means the things I want to do like interesting projects are always done in a cold black hole. Today I've started to access the foundations of our bungalow as I need to install flood defenses.
Thanks David and how true. It's nice to knock off for a pot of tea when I want one. A huge bonus is that I can get stuck into a job now without a pager driving me mad as it used to do at work. The only pressure is as stated above; I try to get so many jobs done during our brief warmer weather and end up tiring myself out.
Excellent news on the Clarke lathe front though; the lathe is up and running like a good un. This morning I ordered a pair of SPZ 512 drive belts; these are cheap enough so I bought a spare both only costing £7.20 inc. I collected them after dinner.
Assembly and alignment was easy enough and without drama; it was wonderful to put the lathe in motion knowing if anything blew up it wouldn't be another cheap flimsy Clarke circuit board.
As you rightly say Refugee this new servo motor is more powerful than the original it is also very much larger having it's controls attached. At 400W it is quite a lot more powerful than the 300W original motor. I need to sort out a starting mechanism to operate the starting lever on the new motor allowing the motor to be locked "on" but compared to the amount of work already carried out I'm confident this won't trouble me too much.
The lathe sounds sweet enough and I'm hopeful this new modification will give years of trouble free running? I was careful not to start messing around with the original lathe which has not been altered in any way; I've used original mounting points or convenient holes in the casting to mount both the counter-shaft assembly and the new motor mounting framework. The counter-shaft assembly is attached using four 6mm set screws; washers and nuts making a very neat job but I confess it took quite a lot of initial sorting out; as with most things once completed they look so easy.
I didn't expect this lathe to let me down the way it did but I've now arranged it so that even if the servo motor fails I can attach a 3 phase motor and VFD so this Clarke can now behave or it is in trouble because I'm on its case.
A new OEM Clarke circuit board costs around £130 but I must have spent around £200 on the upgrade; it's possible had I bought a new circuit board other items would also require replacing and I know however many circuit boards I would install it would only be a matter of time before I destroyed each one. I didn't expect having to go to all this time trouble in order to do a bit of metal turning but Bron kindly bought me this lathe as a present so I want to keep and use it; I don't normally break my toys but it's been an interesting diversion.
Kind regards, Col.
Happiness is a wreck of a cabinet to restore.
