ENCO 13 x 40 lathe and VFD

[Supercel]

Hello-

First time poster here.

Just got an ENCO geared head (308-0233) lathe, and plan to install a VFD to run spindle--no problem with that. A minor issue is the coolant pump, which runs a small 3 phase motor. I have two choices--either replace this pump with a single phase unit, or get a real cheap single to 3 phase converter to do it. Isn't there a simple capacitor only conversion out there for this? If so, is there a reference on-line that could assist with this?

Thanks!
Tim

[Al_The_Man]

If this is a 220v motor, usually fractional VFD's are cheap on ebay, otherwise you could experiment with setting it up like you would an RPC, there are quite a few links here on building tuning etc, this would involve a push button start and some run caps.
Probably frequent start stops might make this method impractical.
Al.