EE motor 5 to 1 gear box

I did a VFD conversion about a year ago and have been pleased with the results, but I think I can do better. My lathe is a 1953 and had a MG set in it and a keyed motor shaft. I understand later models had splined motor shafts. Some have bored this spline out of the motor shaft gear to fit a standard 1 1/8" motor shaft making the adapter plate much simpler. Sence my gear is bored and keyed to 1 1/4" this becomes more difficult. I was thinking if I could get one of those splined gears then the process would be simlified. Question, Would the splined gear fit my gear box? If so, would anyone know the part number for this part and if they were avalible or not?

It may be available but the price could give you a heart attack. You didn't mention what size motor you have. Assuming its 5hp and 1.125 shaft, and make a captive bushing for the gear. Your may have to extend the motor shaft as many have done, and make a key that is captive on the motor shaft. Simple enought to do.

A possible alternative is a motor of the appropriate HP rating, but with a JM shaft.

Those which I have seen have had a shaft which is 1.25 or larger in dia. and is very long relative to the needs of the 10EE's gearbox.

A simple turn/face operation, followed by slotting for the key.

Most of these motors are C-face, but not all have mounting feet.

Or another freaky possibility...

Another freaky possibility (and I've been considering it)...
Is take a truck transmission, make a motor-adapter for it using any brutally-clever method necessary... and fit a small, home-made drive sheave on the output (give yourself a little bit more reduction), and then cleverly incorporate a mechanism to select even-more-ratios...

Dave that sounds like carving turkey with a chainsaw. We have these wonderfully built lathes, which purr while working, and you want to add a rock crusher to them. Or was that a satricial post?

For Toms Wheels, I'm using a 3HP motor 1.125" shaft. I chose the 3HP over the 5HP because of my limited power avalible. I don't do any production work, hobby stuff mostly and some gunsmithing. Do you know anyone who has modified this gear in this way? To do what you say I'd have to bore the gear to 1.5" to eliminate the present keyway, but at least something over 1.375 to make room for the new keyway.

For Peterh5322, I don't know much about motors, but I did some research and found very little. The most info came from Grainger. For this HP size with JM or JP shafts the shafts are 1.250" near the moror flange but are reduced within an inch or so to 1". That's what I understand or am I wrong about that? Where would I look for additional info?

For DavidKamp, I'm sorry, you must get tired of hearing the same old questions over and over and your right I've seen some that put the pulley directly on the motor shaft and eliminate the gear box altogether. I have an old 3 speed trany out of a garden tractor that might get the job done.

My suggestion was to bush the gear, the bushing would be .0625 wall, split the length, so the keyway was still used, tac weld or pin the bushing to the gear, make a key ..0625 higher than the stock key, pinned to the motor shaft.
No need to bore out the gear.

Turkey-salad swarf?

Carving turkey with a chainsaw... hmmm... well, if you used peanut oil instead of bar oil...

I put that note in 'cause the Erie drive did essentially that, and while there're some noise truck trannies out there, a clever guy with some toothpaste and shim-stock and thick oil could make that rock-crusher pretty smooth, especially when run at only a small fraction of it's power rating... but it was simply a possibility.

Scoot- Tom's suggestion of making a bushing to do the adaptation would be the best, with only one problem- you'd need a second lathe available to make the parts. Alas, the reason for having more than one lathe is felt.

Running a 3hp rather than 5hp... power availability- if it's the utility service that's limited, the best way would simply to set some of the VFD's parameters so as to not overload the circuit. If it's a VFD limitation, my personal choice would be to build the drive to the greatest amount of HP expected (like 7.5 or 10) and program the VFD to limit out at the VFD's capacity. For what it's worth, I don't belive there's anything wrong with mismatching VFD power to motor power, provided you set the drive's performance parameters accordingly, and don't overload one of the other.

As for getting reasonable drive power at the spindle, you'll want to figure out how much spindle POWER you'll need- i.e. if you're cutting hard stuff set on a large OD using carbide... you'll need more power than using HSS at slower speeds... blah blah blah...

But machining the gear, motor, and bushing... is a somewhat different story.... you could turn down the motor shaft, and make room for a thicker bushing... as Tom noted, the keyway clearance needn't be part OF the bushing... it merely needs to accomodate it.

Thanks Tom, For the more detailed discription. I was trying to do it without spliting the bushing and welding was not on my mind at all. Welding is not my strong suit, but I think I can handle this. Thanks again.

Thanks to Dave and Peter as well. I forgot to also mention the power is single phase and there's also a limited budget. The higher horse power gets more complicated and more expensive. One problem does go away when you go to 7.5HP. I think standard shaft dia. is 1.250" for that HP.

Not always. I have a 7 1/2 hp TENV Inverter duty motor with a 1.5 Dia. Shaft. I have not decided whether to adapt the spline shaft from the GE Motor to the Baldor or reduce the Dia. of the Baldor and remove the splines form the drive gear and broach a keyway. This is actually just an upgrade from a TEFC Inverter duty motor with encoder to a TENV Vector Duty Motor with encoder. The TEFC motor had a much smaller shaft so I just used a rigid coupler with very good results.