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Hardinge DSM59 restoration

Xnerd

Plastic
Joined
Jul 12, 2016
I just got gifted to me hardinge lathe pretty strip down it only has the rectangular slide that fits right up by the head stuck and two tip slides. And a small three jaw chuck. The collet closer is in really good shape and the bed has never ever ever ever been used at all it was covered up it's whole life. Everything needs a good cleaning but other than that it's all in really good shape all the wiring is in really nice shape all of those relays seem to trip good on the cams from what I could see everything smooth. I have a lot of learning to do I don't know a damn thing about this machine I know it does and what it doesn't do but I'm going to have a hell of a time getting it up and running even.

One of my big question is should I get a standard phase converter old style or one of these new vfd?

It's not like I'm going to want to do wildly variable things I'm going to be making small parts on it once I get it up and running and then I'm going to see about collecting some of the attachments if I can get them hit rebuildable condition.

Another question is this thing thing has a externally mounted Transformer that's about 3 foot high on the outside I'm wondering if they step down from 480 to 240 3 phase the tag on the transformer is missing I guess I'll have to get the multimeter out lol


You guys always give me good advice so I figured I'd post it here

Any input would be greatly appreciated

Jeff

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If the original Hardinge drive is intact with the two speed motor, I would use a standard converter rather than a VFD. It is an elegant system which is well fitted for the lathe. You will love it and it will be much less work than mounting a VFD in an integrated way.

Pete
 
A good place to start would be posting pictures of the machine, and a picture of the nameplate on the door of the electrical panel.

Bill
Yes I lost connection last night while I was attempting to add some images
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If the original Hardinge drive is intact with the two speed motor, I would use a standard converter rather than a VFD. It is an elegant system which is well fitted for the lathe. You will love it and it will be much less work than mounting a VFD in an integrated way.

Pete
That was my thoughts on this subject as well. Not that I have any real experience with this subject but I thought to myself what does a vfd do that would add value to operating this machine.. I could find no reason other than cost value. While cost is always a consideration, it shouldn't be an this instance.


I am very impressed with the design of this machine,

I will take more better pictures in the morning
There was a big power outage in mid Michigan just before I got this machine and when they brought the power back up at the shop that this machine lived in, the power jumped in and out 3 or 4 time so I am told with loud zapping bangs. After witch this machine would no longer fire up. They were monkeying with the electrical in the building and it sounds like they caused an open leg on the nutral rail to me. Half the ship was at noticeable low power during the bangs, which is a classic sign. Knowing that transformers hate off and on surging power I suspect one or more failed transformers here.....

I will have to test them on at a time when I can. I'm pretty disabled as you may or may not know so this may take me an unreasonably long time. Even the act of taking pictures is very hard on me. This is a hobby that keeps my mind occupied and presents me with challenges that are good for me to try to tackle. So when I take a long while to get back here and respond please understand that at times I'm too sick to even do this.

Thanks guys!

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There seems to be all different kinds of phase converters out there! There a rotary phase converters and 9 rotary phase converters digital phase converters fancy digital screens and Plain Jane metal box types they seem to very by horsepower hell I don't even know what horsepower this is it says .75 + .375 is it possible that it's really that low? Are 3-phase motor is that powerful?

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If the original Hardinge drive is intact with the two speed motor, I would use a standard converter rather than a VFD. It is an elegant system which is well fitted for the lathe. You will love it and it will be much less work than mounting a VFD in an integrated way.

Pete
Would it make sense to you that a shop that's wired for 440 would put a big step down transformer on the machine to step it back down to 240 3-phase? The plug itself is a 440 style plug-in rated for 440 volt 30 amps period but every single more motor is a 220 motor. The schematic is still in the door slot but it's so discard that you can't read the parts that are necessary to ascertain that
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A clean picture of the transformer with the red label in the lower corner of this picture will give us a clue to what the control is wired for.

Bill


Yes it is common to put transformers to convert the building power to what any given machine needs.
 
A clean picture of the transformer with the red label in the lower corner of this picture will give us a clue to what the control is wired for.

Bill


Yes it is common to put transformers to convert the building power to what any given machine needs.
Is this good or do you need the low wiring in view?

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The control transformer in the pic is wired for 230 volts.

If you put your 240 volt power on the top of the disconnect (upper left corner) after removing existing wires, you should be good to go.

Do not touch the speed change until the spindle turns the correct direction.
With both levers to the right, the top of the spindle should come toward you.

Bill
 
The control transformer in the pic is wired for 230 volts.

If you put your 240 volt power on the top of the disconnect (upper left corner) after removing existing wires, you should be good to go.

Do not touch the speed change until the spindle turns the correct direction.
With both levers to the right, the top of the spindle should come toward you.

Bill
So basically just cut the (big mains 480 to 240) transformer out of the circuit as everything after that would have been 230v anyway...
Why remove the existing wires?

Confused

Also do I get a phase converter based on the largest HP motor in this machine? The main Motor seems to be small

Any insight?

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Also I have had a few people mention something vague about the spindle direction and making sure somthing...
Don't rea,ly understand that.... does thus mean wiring it incorrectly will cause the spindle to drive clock wise? When you say "until" the spindle turns the correct direction, it's a bit confusing as I don't know why it wouldn't or what I could do to effect that paradigm
 
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Also I have had a few people mention something vague about the spindle direction and making sure somthing...
Don't really understand that.... does thus mean wiring it incorrectly will cause the spindle to drive clock wise? When you say "until" the spindle turns the correct direction, it's a bit confusing as I don't know why it wouldn't or what I could do to effect that paradigm
The direction of rotation of three phase motors can be reversed by swapping two of the three phases.

Think a little bit how that lathe works and I hope it would become rather obvious how problematic could be (especially for the speed change) having the motor running in the opposite direction.

Regarding the phase converter, I strongly suggest going for a rotary phase converter, since VFD don't tolerate much in terms of switches, etc. between them and the motor they control, and static phase converters don't provide any decent third leg.
I'm not an expert in the field. However, I believe that in many machines it is important to wire them so that the "wild leg" (i.e. the third phase, produced by the rotary phase converter, contrary to the other two coming from the input power and simply "shifted) should be always connected to a specific one of the three connectors in the machine, essentially the one that doesn't feed the controls.

Paolo
 
So basically just cut the (big mains 480 to 240) transformer out of the circuit as everything after that would have been 230v anyway...
Why remove the existing wires?



Confused

Also do I get a phase converter based on the largest HP motor in this machine? The main Motor seems to be small

Any insight?

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If you do not remove the existing wires from the top of the disconnect in the electrical panel, you will be back feeding the 440/220 transformer and can wind up having 440 on the plug that was used to power the lathe in the old shop. This is a very hazardous situation. It also would overload your phase converter.

As Paolo stated, your reverse a 3 phase motor by swapping 2 leads.

If you do not make sure that you have the phase rotation of the incoming power correct, (the spindle turning the correct direction) and start messing with the speed change, bad things happen when you push the speed decrease direction and the speed actually increases. The limit switches to limit travel no longer work, and you jam the works, and possibly strip a gear, and trip the overload. Then nothing works, and you have no idea what happened.

Yes, basically all the "extra added stuff" will not be needed, and can be removed. That is why I said to disconnect the existing wires on the top of the disconnect.

I am running my DSM-59 from a 3 HP rotary converter.

Bill
 
If you do not remove the existing wires from the top of the disconnect in the electrical panel, you will be back feeding the 440/220 transformer and can wind up having 440 on the plug that was used to power the lathe in the old shop. This is a very hazardous situation. It also would overload your phase converter.

As Paolo stated, your reverse a 3 phase motor by swapping 2 leads.

If you do not make sure that you have the phase rotation of the incoming power correct, (the spindle turning the correct direction) and start messing with the speed change, bad things happen when you push the speed decrease direction and the speed actually increases. The limit switches to limit travel no longer work, and you jam the works, and possibly strip a gear, and trip the overload. Then nothing works, and you have no idea what happened.

Yes, basically all the "extra added stuff" will not be needed, and can be removed. That is why I said to disconnect the existing wires on the top of the disconnect.

I am running my DSM-59 from a 3 HP rotary converter.

Bill
Thank you very much Bill I appreciate all that you guys have told me it's a great help period I am very methodical it diagnosing and solving problems because I do indeed understand the pitfalls of jumping in and running away with something hazardly. In my former life I was a robotics engineer I did a lot of field repair work as a result and had to troubleshoot very complex movement issues

Now when you say remove the two what is on the top left shown in the image you realize that that picture was flipped around because the assembly itself is mounted upside down in the Box. I assumed you were looking at the diagram of the coils and made the selection of top left wiring.

Basically what I'm going to do is take the gigantic Transformer out of the picture and use the wiring Beyond it as the power entry cable as the large fused power entry switch would be a door additional safety bit.

In this case shouldn't have to touch the transformer at all once I understand the phases. I can assume that the wiring was correct as the lathe did get some use in the shop. The transformer supplied 230v 3 phase into that switch which in turn distributed it to the proper connections right? Can't I simple wire up to that switch the same way the transformer did?

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A rotary converter is a good first choice for running this machine. Because the motor is pretty small (3/4 hp in mine,
can't really make out the nameplate on yours) the converter motor won't have to be very big. I run this machine from
a simple 5 hp idler converter:

DSM5.jpg


DSM1.jpg


The converter is best described as 'stone age:'

Conv.jpg
 
A rotary converter is a good first choice for running this machine. Because the motor is pretty small (3/4 hp in mine,
can't really make out the nameplate on yours) the converter motor won't have to be very big. I run this machine from
a simple 5 hp idler converter:

DSM5.jpg


DSM1.jpg


The converter is best described as 'stone age:'

Conv.jpg
Ok so you did the homemade 3 phase deal....
I was told that was not a good option..... was that incorrect?

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Ok so you did the homemade 3 phase deal....
I was told that was not a good option..... was that incorrect?

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As far as I know (once again: I'm not an expert), this setup is still better than a static phase converter, but not as good as a "real" rotary one, since you would need a bank of running capacitors to both properly space the three phases (i.e. making them as close as possible to 120°) and balance the voltage of the "wild leg".

My understanding is that, anyhow, the balancing with capacitors is itself a compromise, unless you have a fairly constant load attached to the RPC (i.e. it is perfect only for a particular load and drifts off-perfection either with lighter or heavier loads).

Paolo
 








 
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