DIY Adjustable Column Mill Treadmill Motor Conversion

[@bostedtap8399]

Comprehensive upgrade to a basic mill, great job. I'm slowly getting there on replicating the SCR control with line filter, line choke, etc. Thanks for sharing and stay safe all. Best regards from the UK. John.

[@dazecars]

Glad it helped

[@crazydavidsmith]

I've been watching your videos for a long time. You're so awesome.

[@dazecars]

Thanks!

[@zetuskid]

Another excellent demonstration of DIY application of a DC motor. Thanks Day for showing a simplified instructional video. You are a very good instructor and your videos are placed safely in my Library. Thank goodness!

[@dazecars]

Very welcome

[@JohnDoe-ls2ww]

Very nice. This is what I am hoping to do to convert an ancient heavy duty drill press I have

[@dazecars]

glad you liked it, I hope your bild goes well

[@JohnDoe-ls2ww]

@@dazecars thanks, and so do I lol. My mini lathe also needs the same conversion as the factory speed control board I fear is on its way out. Have a good one!

[@dazecars]

👍

[@MichaelJeffers75]

I added a TMM to my little 8" table top drill press and it runs like a champ now. I'm also building a 2x72 knife grinder for another TMM I salvaged. I'm also trying to keep the flywheel on for that project for the added (rotary capacitance?). You're right, these things are amazing, people just don't now what they're throwing away.

[@dazecars]

My drill press is the next on my hit list to get a treadmill motor.

[@markmiller6817]

Another great video , you answered my question about a jack shaft (lay shaft) secondary shaft . It's a good thing .

[@dazecars]

Glad to help

[@aguycalledlucas]

How did I miss this new video? I’m not getting notifications when you post a new video.

[@dazecars]

double check your youtube settings

[@wh0tube]

Absolutely beautiful, in a frankensteinesque kind of way 😊👍👍

[@dazecars]

Thanks! It was a fun engineering project for sure!!

[@wh0tube]

@@dazecars and well worth documenting. I learnt quite a bit and really enjoyed the real-time design & development process. 👌

[@dazecars]

It turned out very well and I have used it more in the last couple years then all the previous years combined (in both incarnations after removing the mill head from the combo) The problem is the bed travel is insufficient for a lot of operations so I had to upgrade to a big boy mill that I am in the process of setting up now. The mill head from the DIY mill will be going back on the lathe restoring it to a combo. This frees up all the work from the DIY mill build to convert it into a surface grinder which I will be documenting in the future.

[@wh0tube]

@@dazecars wow! Where do you stop? 😁 l’ll be watching with great interest and living through you 😊

[@dazecars]

I like projects... sometimes its more about modifying things than making things from scratch.

[@sebastienlambert1976]

Hi.🙂 amazing work !! But, i wonder if its worth the effort, can you still drill a 1/2'' stainless hole @ 250 r.p.m ?? or if you still have to change pulley to get enough power??

[@dazecars]

Great question!! In the case of my original mil/AC motor configuration the slowest I could go was 375 and that was 4.5:1 pulley ratio. That motor was putting out about 2.3 foot pounds of torque so 10.3 with the ratio. My current motor puts out about 3 foot pounds and has a pulley ratio of 3.5:1 which works out to about 10.5 foot pounds so it is basically the same, the only difference is I can now go a lot slower, adjust it up or down for the perfect RPMs and still have the same torque. Now don't get me wrong this mill lathe combo was not a huge machine to begin with so it may still not be enough to go through stainless at 250 or maybe it is I don't know as I never work with stainless. What I do know is this, on my lathe I use a treadmill motor and I single point thread grade 8 bolts all the time. This is done at 100 RPMS, I don't use a compound so much higher tool pressure and it works very well. I have yet to be disappointed with the torque on my machines.

[@Justamanonamission77]

So Day since you decided to keep the flywheel for the mill, have you considered or done the same on the lathe?

[@dazecars]

no because the mass of the 5" chuck and adaptor plate is much more than that of the flywheel so the treadmill motor flywheel would be redundant. Functionally there would be no improvement in performance in fact performance would probably go down as the mass would require the motor to work harder.

[@Justamanonamission77]

@@dazecars makes allot of sense!

[@dazecars]

👍

[@jamestregler1584]

It's a happy Mill 🐱

[@dazecars]

its been amazing to be able to adjust height with the flip of a switch

[@tcalcut]

I am so jealous

[@dazecars]

glad you liked it.

[@alexbat4313]

Have you ever used a large treadmill motor. Something with bigger than a MC2100 board? Could a 2100 board power it?

[@dazecars]

Could it power it, yes but for how long I do not know. My biggest complaint with the MC-2100 is fragility. I burned one out by simply powering up a motor at full speed rather than turning it on at slower speed and turning it up and it was a small treadmill motor.

[@paulmanhart4481]

Hi Daze. How did you get your DC for the rpm display? I assume you have a converter in your power box? I’m still confused about how to hook up the red, black and two blue wires. Your video on this wasn’t clear to me. Paul

[@dazecars]

I used treadmill parts to power the RPM meter on the lathe kzbin.info/www/bejne/g561foGlbq6VjLc For the mill there is a wall wart inside the control box.

[@paulmanhart4481]

@@dazecars I know. But you didn’t show it in the wiring diagram. I’m having trouble with figuring out how to have a separate electronics box for the SCR, BR, choke etc, and another box for the controls. Electric box contains 1. SCR 2. Toroid 3. Circuit breaker 4. Bridge rectifier 5. Ac to dc power supply for rpm display 6. DC choke Control box contains 1. On off switch. 2. Two potentiometers. 3. Forward/Reverse switch. 4. Digital RPM display. If I bring the power into the control box I can turn it on before it heads down to the electric box. But I need to bring the potentiometer wires up, as well as the power for the rpm display. I also have wires for forward reverse that need to come up from the electric box. Can you see the problem? I want to mount the small control box on the lathe and keep all the big stuff away, attached to the wall. But when I draw it up, I have 3 glands in the control box just to handle the wires. This is not my string point. I was hoping you had some good ideas. Paul

[@dazecars]

​@@paulmanhart4481 You must be doing something right as I also have 3 glands coming out of the back of my machine 😁. Power wire comes from the wall and goes to the lathe lathe column, There is an AC master switch in the column then AC wire comes out and goes to my RPM power supply, the RPM power supply is just tapped into the switched AC line before it goes on to the SCR. From there AC goes to the box with the SCR and all the power supply components. Once converted to DC the cord carrying DC goes back up to the mill, goes into the column so it can go into the forward reverse switch and then out to the motor. Both the DC in and out go through the same gland along with the potentiometer wires. The AC in and out has its own gland. Make sense?

[@blender_unleashed]

Watching this for the second time and I can't help but think, wouldn't it have just been easier to make the tables height adjustable?

[@dazecars]

I couldn't find a ready made dove tale that was big enough without spending a ton of money, but the linear rails were relatively cheep. because the mil head does not need to move perpendicular to the rails it can just move up and down inside the column. The table would not have worked in the column due to the side to side movement. Also if I made it a knee mill it would no longer have been a bench top unit and that would have required a lot more steel. All in all the rails were cost effective and and the easies mode to what I already had built when I created the fixed column mill.

[@blender_unleashed]

@@dazecars now that you have this mill you should start machining and selling ways lol

[@dazecars]

@@blender_unleashed Let me guess you would be my first customer 😂😂😂 Not interested in making and selling any more than I already do.

[@tractormandeere]

Which video shows how to do that?

[@dazecars]

I have a couple : kzbin.info/www/bejne/d5Ddc3qAoM11d8Usi=CfqDOSYRIDnTZB1D kzbin.info/www/bejne/gYHGcqVvpNekkNksi=sG_K8B34XTNyF3vS Let me know if you have any other question or if I can be of any further assistance

[@tractormandeere]

I use one of the motor from a commercial treadmill on my 1949 12”x36” Clausing lathe. I can turn steel at rpm I want with my head stock belt in the mid position. Which is slightly lower than 1:1. No problem making very heavy cuts. I have a second motor and toying with the idea of installing on my MD-16 Jet mill. Has anyone done this on a mill this size?

[@dazecars]

First thing I would do is calculate the torque on the motor that is on the machine. That is the start to figure out if a treadmill motor is even an option.

[@tractormandeere]

Ok found the information in the other video. My mills present ac motor produces 3.0 foot pounds of torque. The DC treadmill will produce 4.6 foot pounds of torque.

[@dazecars]

last questin what is the max RPM of both motors?@@tractormandeere

[@tractormandeere]

The tread mill motor is 3600 and the present AC motor is 1750. I think I would leave the present 12 speed pulley system in place .

[@dazecars]

That's absolutely perfect. I would gear it at 2:1 right off the motor, that will double your torque and give you an RPM range almost identical to the AC motor. From there you can adjust your pulley system for the best "most often used" speeds and then leave it that way and adjust spindle speed on the fly with the turn of a knob. If something requires way more or way less RPM you can adjust the pulley system but I would be willing to bet you can find the sweet spot of 99% of use without a pulley swap.@@tractormandeere

[@carlkellogg5342]

What size Ferrite Ring MH and Amps should one use on a treadmill circuit board ? Thank You.

[@dazecars]

ring need to be about 1" across and the wire should be a minum of 16 awg but 14 awg is way better.

[@carlkellogg5342]

@@dazecars Thank you. Your videos are light years ahead of anything on KZbin. Looking forward to next one.

[@dazecars]

@@carlkellogg5342 that is high praise, thank you!! The video that drops tomorrow will be a continuation on my 393W build. Future videos will cover an electric motor DIY dyno build. I want to use it to compare power supplies and see how the power supply effects motor HP and torque. I will do a video on the treadmill motor conversion on my band saw and anything else I come up with along the way. Just to name a few. Lots planned, stay tuned!!