[dharmic]

$10 worth of parts for a PWM source and direction control vs $300 for a reversing controller on that site. It's for a hobby machine. Seems like the exact opposite of a waste of time and money to me...

For a commercial machine, different story. But you wouldn't be messing around with treadmill motors in that case anyway.

I did much the same with my 2x72" grinder build - took the power box for a treadmill with the motor and added a PWM generator with a pot to get speed control. Mine was a $2 Atmel AVR (the Tiny45 8 pin package) which I've programmed then birdnest soldered straight into the power driver board and it's been running like a dream for 2 years.

[Al_The_Man]

$10 worth of parts for a PWM source and direction control vs $300 for a reversing controller on that site. It's for a hobby machine. Seems like the exact opposite of a waste of time and money to me...
.

His link just pointed to DC motors!?
But around here on the local market sites, there is at least one treadmill every week not working-free pick up, usually the motor is OK and the MC2100 PWM controller is used in quite a few.
So I agree it is not a bad means of general purpose spindle, once upon a time, DC spindles were virtually the norm.
Al.

[dharmic]

His link just pointed to DC motors!?

IK,R? I went up their page menu from there to DC motors to controllers and found USD264 was the cheapest reversible one they had.

But around here on the local market sites, there is at least one treadmill every week not working-free pick up, usually the motor is OK and the MC2100 PWM controller is used in quite a few.
So I agree it is not a bad means of general purpose spindle, once upon a time, DC spindles were virtually the norm.
Al.

There might be better ways of doing a motor with a bit of go and speed control (even looking at a heavy duty hobby BLDC motor and an O-Drive), but I doubt you'd find cheaper than the trusty old treadmill.