Just before christmas I ended up buying a big CNC router. It is a nice unit, vacuum table, ATC, NK260 controller. It seemed like a good deal the only catch.... 380vac spindle. I figured. Hey, the rest of the machine runs on 220, so I will just get a phase converter and a transformer and use that to power the vfd in the cabinet. So, I was all set to order that stuff up, $2500 locally. Then I saw a youtube video of a guy running a 380vac spindle on 220, he was using a huanyang vfd that was 220in and 380out. I didn't even know that they existed. I thought, cool I will find someone selling those and get one ordered up and swap the new VFD in and all will be good.... Ordered it up, a few weeks later it shows up at my door and I finally found some room in my schedule to get this big router up and running. This thing has been taking up room in my shop for 6 months. I was super excited.

I get it mounted start wiring it up... and fire up the new vfd. Go through the manual getting it set up. Set the standard stuff changed the settings to 400hz and output volts to 380. Got into the motor setup and put the info from my spindle in there..... then what the... the spindle is 600hz. I didn't' even know that was a thing. I figured 400hz was standard. Looked at the old vfd that I had pulled from the cabinet it too was a 400hz max unit. So, I guess you can run a 600hz spindle on 400hz... I looked at the manual for the Delta VFD and it doesn't seem to have a way to bump it to 600hz, 400hz is the max. So, a little deeper digging, I found a nice article about running 50hz motors on 60hz and vice versa. It seems that running a 60hz motor on 50hz it will run 20% slower. Ok, but it will also run on less current, and less power and actually need less voltage, otherwise you risk overheating it

So, I reprogrammed the vfd and set the volts to 255 (about 2/3 of 380) then I changed the amps to 8 (2/3 of 12 amps on the spindle) and I changed the KW of the spindle to 3.6 (2/3 of the original 5.5kw) It seemed to work better... but really it still didn't seem to work.

My next idea is to grab the 2.2 kw 220vac freq drive off my bridgeport and see if I can get this spindle chooching with that. I know that it will be drastically underpowered to do much work. but, the alternative is to throw the original freq drive back in the spindle and spend the money on the phase converter and transformer. Even then, I am not so sure about the entire thing working as it was supposed to as the nameplate on that vfd is only 400hz.

So, now you are all wondering... why did you buy that machine to begin with... well long story short... it was cheap.. well not really cheap, still pretty expensive, but it was cheaper than it would have been had I ordered it new. The company I have purchased other machines through is an importer of machines from china. They ordered this machine for another customer. He backed out of the deal when his electrician told him he wouldn't hook up a 380vac machine. So, they had to refund him his money, They were short on cash, so I bought the machine from them so they could refund him. I got it here, was too busy to do anything with it, and it turned into a big expensive work bench. I would like to start using though, as I have some projects in mind. I don't really like the option of the phase converter, and the next option is to order up a 220vac spindle and another new vfd. They do make this exact same machine in a 220vac single phase version (why they didn't order that to begin with is beyond me). But, it looks like $3200 for the spindle... and then another $500 for another new vfd.

Its kind of been a pain in the ass, and I really shouldn't have bought the machine, as I didn't need to have it taking up space in the shop... but since it's here and already bought, I had better figure out a way to get it up and running enough to pay for itself.