10ee solid state dc motor retro-fit

Has anyone ever used a Beel Industrial DC motor retro-fit for a 10EE?

"The D510-FW allows you to retain the original configuration
of your lathe by keeping the DC Motor and headstock as is.
This unit is very user-friendly; It was designed to be installed
as easily as a plug n' play."

BICL - Single Phase Drives: Variator Series: C210



Sounds like it will work for me with single phase 220v in my shop.

Randy

Wow! Can't wait to hear what Peterh has to say about this one.

no it only sounds good, check it out first before you spend your $
You may find at 220 volt you can't get full RPM and you will need a bust transformer to do so, something like 220volt to 270volt
BICL will be a lot of help setting up the drive but if you can't understand the stuff you have now how in hell are you going to ever get the BICL stuff to work.
It may be the stuff you have now only uses 2 leg to run the main motor and 3 leg for only the pump like most EE.
We need to see the prints.
John

That type of system can only get a low voltage because the designers want to do it with cheap SCRs or MOSFETS. I have had a single phase magamp full wave bridge rectified with some filter capacitors putting out over 300 VDC to the same motor on my lathe. As a bonus, it is almost indestructable. I have started my lathe with the spindle locked and the magamp was unperturbed. You can't leave it that way for too long because all the current is going through one set of armature windings and they will overheat. I doubt that many people would want to pay for it, though.

While I'm on the subject, if you have a DC supply that is 150 volts each side of ground so the insulation on the motor isn't strained, I see no reason the main supply cannot be higher, raising the base speed and reducing the field weakened portion.

Bill

The single phase magamp was more a case of seeing if I could do it. The special cut core (actually two cores)is split in the short dimension instead of the long one so I could wind the coils directly on the core. It cost me $300, but it works well. The output is like an SCR without an attitude. It starts to fire at the end of the half cycle and progresses back to the full waveform as you increase the control current. Of course, the single phase one only delivers 120 cycles per second. Since I have three phase at the shop, the one I will use if I ever do it is three cores arranged in a circle with a single control winding wrapping through all of them. Full wave bridged, that delivers 360 CPS, requiring minimal filtering.

BTW, the current project I am kicking around is cutting the center leg of the core from one of the transformers like the one I sent you down to the same width as the outside legs, making it a three phase core. Then wind a delta primary and broken star secondaries arranged so that each output leg is a composite of the three primaries, one of which will be fed from a capacitor like a normal static phase converter. The transformer should try to force the output into a 120 degree relationship, far better than the usual static converter and at least as good as the usual rotary one without the usual sturm & drang.

Bill

Sequim tool
"You may find at 220 volt you can't get full RPM and you will need a bust transformer to do so, something like 220volt to 270volt
BICL will be a lot of help setting up the drive but if you can't understand the stuff you have now how in hell are you going to ever get the BICL stuff to work."



The reason I am changing the "stuff I have now" is because it does not work, bad circuit board ($1500) and no 3 phase at my shop). I need to find a single phase 220 volt solution.

Beel Industrial says that their DC motor retro-fit has been used by John Deere Tractors, the U.S. Airforce design team in TN, the U.S. Army weapons prototype team in Maryland , several university research labs and two units installed at CalTech in Los Angeles.

Sounds like it must be a good unit. They are sending me references so I can talk to and get some feedback from the techs that installed them.

I've been looking at AC motor and VFD. Been told the DC motor is the best to have and keep it. I'm open for suggestions.

Randy

From what I'm reading, it really is not a simple, plug&play solution for novice electricians. Boeingone, your lathe has already been converted to something like this, maybe it would work for you.

I have retrofit both a Beel ( 10EE turret manufacturing lathe) and an AC Vector drive ( 10EE square dial), had a WIAD running in the manufacturing turret lathe, and still have a couple m-g machines.

The advantages: M-G are easiest to keep running. Its all basic stuff. They are also the loudest.

The wiad - quietest but hardest to troubleshoot IMHO.

The Beel - easiest mechanical conversion, figure you will have to trace every wire and have a good electrical understanding ( not as simple as sliding a pizza in the microwave). Mine only achieves about 2200 rpm, but its all I need in that machine. I never put the boost transformer on it.

The AC drive - achieves 4000 rpm, hardest mechanical conversion, braking resistors takes some research/ smarts to size properly.

as far as performance, the m-g's and wiad's perform very well. Everybody wants their retro to perform as well as a wiad/ m-g. That says alot.

I like to read what all the electrical and drive gurus say about this kind of stuff. The extent of my electrical knowledge can be listed on the back of your business card. My m-g machine runs well, but nice to know whats out there just in case....

Bill

Whether thermionic vacuum tube rectifiers (thyratrons) or solid-state rectifiers (SCRs) are used, the source voltage must be about 300 volts in order for the original spindle motor to develop nameplate rpm and torque.

240 into a Beel (or competitive) will not get the job done.

240 plus a 120/240 to 24/48 buck/boost, wired in 240 to 48 boost mode, thereby giving 288, still might not be enough, although logic says the thyratrons have a higher forward voltage drop, and the SCRs have a lower forward voltage drop.

Just keep in mind that Monarch Machine Tool, perhaps out of an over-abundance of caution, and the realization that some premises are located at the far end of a utility's primary, where the voltage is naturally lower, went with 300, and compensated for the higher voltage by shortening the switch's "on" time.

If the source voltage is high, the switch can compensate as described. However, if the source voltage is low, the switch cannot so compensate, and the motor's performance may be measurably poorer (lower maximum RPM, lower maximum torque, or a combination of both).

There is no free lunch.