No electrician here, but its my understanding that a rotary converter may not put out "balanced" voltage. Your machine manual may say something like voltage must be = or - 5%. I run both a rotary and a PP.
Spend the extra money and buy the PP. You won't be dissappointed.

CNC manufacturers generally recommend against using rotary converters, but a lot of people have used them successfully. Usually the control part of the machine runs off a single phase, so you need to make sure you wire it so that your "real" phase feeds the controller and the generated phase only feeds the spindle motor and any other 3 phase pump motors you may have.

The other bad news on a rotary converter is that they are pretty noisy, the motors not just idling, its generating that 3rd phase, so it will sound like a loaded motor.

3 phase motors are pretty cheap to pick up used though, so I'd aim for at least a 15 hp one. You just need the motor and a "static" converter box to get the motor started, although if you are really bucks down, some guys use a pull rope on the shaft, then hit the juice to it and off it goes, then power up the machine.

There's a VFD forum on here that likely has some more info on rotary converters also.

Good luck-

Paul T.

I ran Two Cincinnatis in a garage from a single 15 horespower motor.
I paid $20 for it at a scrap yard. The controls came from the recycling yard too, under $100 total, then $1100 for the electrician to run the conduit and wiring to the machines.

The only loads in the machine that run on all three phases are the DC Bus power supply, and the colant pump.
I moved one wire to take the toolchanger motor from line3 to Line two, and then ALL the single phase loads were on Line1 and Line2. Line3 was then used for the generated "Wild" leg.
Everything was fine after that.

I had two contacters. One for power in, and one for adding the start capacitor.
So, all you had to do was hit the start button until the motor was spun up, and you were good to go. No ropes, or pulleys or anything else.
Someone made me a "Dog House" for the motors to sit under, outside so there was no noise or heat in the shop anyway.

The DC Bus Power supply can run derated on single phase, there is an application note online to run the single phase into L1 and L2. So, the wild leg to L3 seemed like a good choice.

Granted you could hook something up wrong and blow the whole thing to smitherens.
But thats true even if you have an industrial supply of three phase power.

I don't get out much.

Wunna compare notes on that?

A full week without leaving is fairly common.

I think I have gone up to 3 weeks before?



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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

[QUOTE=ARB;1230108]On the Arrows there is a air blast inside the tool carousel that helps to keep the tapers clean. It don't amount to much but it uses quite a bit of air. Not a ton but if your short on air it may be worth disabling it.


The reason the air blast don't amount to much is because it cleans the slots on the Geneva Mechanism not the tool tapers!
Don't disconnect the supply, once the slots are worn the tool has to align in the spindle and drives the carousel round during the tool change.
There should be a proper transport bracket to lock the table and spindle, if not get the seller to knock one up, a ring to fit round the 'nose' with a bit of rubber on-top to cushion things weld on two legs then a flat plate which is bolted to the table. These things tend to get junked after the machine is first planted.
The last machine I had delivered had a block of wood jammed between the spindle and the table, thing is how much force in Z to apply? The X and Y axis were moving as the machine was in transit, end result the dealer was forced to pay for a new Y axis servo and servo drive plus an engineer from Cinci, £££££ just for the sake of a simple bracket!

Bill

There were some 6k grease packed spindles that did not have the oil mist bearing lube. Nice if you only ran one tool... you could run the machine overnight contouring without air as long as the pressure switch was bypassed... actually did a couple contouring jobs that way on one.

[QUOTE=Bill.C;1231778]That what I get for Ass-U-me ing.