Perhaps experiences vary. I have had my PCNC770 for almost 4 years and have been very pleased with it. Tormach customer support is supposed to be excellent but fortunately I have had almost no need for it.
I had a Haas TM1 that was 7.5 horsepower and ran on single phase power.
Only problem was, on single phase power, you lose about 40% of the horsepower. That would still have given me 4.5 horsepower instead of 1.5.
I’ve said before, if I had it to do over again, I would have taken some of the money I got when I sold my FADAL, paid off my Haas and brought it home.
I
You can buy GOOD PARTS or you can buy CHEAP PARTS, but you can't buy GOOD CHEAP PARTS.
I have a TM1-P with full enclosure running on single phase too.
It would cost me around $8000.00 to have 3 phases in the shop, now I'm connected to the house 200 AMP panel. Electric bill is about 1/5 of what I would pay if I had 3 phases.
Price for industrial use and price for home use is probably that, 5 times more for industrial use.
In this area 3 phase power = demand reading power!
Demand reading power means the highest power amount used in one day during a 30 day period is the amount your charged by, or times 30 days. In short it means if you run your tools for 1 day you will get charged for that one day x 30 days even if you never turned on another tool for any other 29 days that billing period.
I run an American Rotary AR 10HP PC on my 5 HP Timesaver wet sander. Works great and is pretty painless to use. Not that expensive to buy.
The PC fits right under a work bench and is extremely quiet.
I do also have a 7.5 HP Mini Mill that runs on single phase. Should I ever need any more HP out of it, a 15HP PC would cover it with ease.
Lee
As mentioned above 3 phase = demand reading power. In this area they are currently working on doing this to all customers. If you go over a certain cap on power then they will charge you "residence or business" almost 2x the cost per kilowatt if you go over a "low 512 kwh month" cap even by just 1 kilowatt. I didn't know until today that most commercial customers are already dealing with this and now they want to add homes. You can run a simple tormach 1100 about 64 hours a week or about 256 hours total and go over that cap. The mini mill mentioned above would run maybe 65 hours at most.
But we have renewable energy lol whatever that is.
Here is what I would like to see in order.
1. Faster acceleration.
2. Optional high speed ISO20 (or other) ATC spindle and ATC option with matching forks.
3. Larger tool count carousel. (it only needs one or two slots for larger diameter tools, and none for high speed)
(I would rapidly work towards getting another machine if the above were available.)
4. Larger work envelope.
Except for the larger work envelope all of that is possible with the existing machines.
Bob La Londe
http://www.YumaBassMan.com
Mine is pretty small. 10 HP. Easily the quietest machine in the shop. Except maybe the drill presses.
I have seen videos of loud ones though. That would be annoying.
Oh wait! I forgot how quiet the air dryer is.
Lee
Your electric bill would be $265.17 in this area
Last month I use 18.23 kwh/day and I have led lighting, Only one person in a modest size home with a 2 car garage and its winter time. Turn on a/c and it almost doubles! And they wonder why industry will not locate here only service type businesses.
At my most efficient months I cannot get under their 512 kwh a month AND THEY KNOW IT. They have networked meters that monitor all aspects of your power usage here.
I replaced 1600 watts of light in garage alone with 110 watts of led. Same with rest of house. The main bathroom uses more power in the non led lights then the rest of the house combined
Checking my bill, last month I used 1368kWh or about 51kWh/day. Total cost, including electricity, delivery charge and taxes was cdn$193.78. Like you we have networked meters and also time of use billing. About 2/3 of my usage was at the low rate. If all usage had been during the day and early evening (like a normal business) the bill would have been about cdn$265 (the same as you calculated but fortunately in Canadian dollars). Twenty years ago electricity costs in Ontario were among the lowest in North America but we now have one of the highest costs. It is the miracles of green power from wind turbines and solar panels! Incidentally the exorbitant increase in the cost of power is THE major issue in our election coming later this year.
kstrauss,
That works out to $.1417/Kwh. I assume there is a flat service fee in that also so you're cost per kwh is what $.12-$.13?
I pay $.122 /kwh plus a $32/month service fee in USD. Your situation doesn't seem too bad.
Ken, are you charged a line loss fee of 10%? Being rural, I am billed directly by Ontario Hydro and the first thing they do is add 10% to the Kwh used for line loss. The last time I checked I was paying over $0.21/Kwh during peak usage after adding all the Wynne/Liberal added fees and taxes.
I didn't realize that there would be so much interest! I'll try to remain mostly non-political.
For me the rates are as follows:
Electricity charges -- we have Time of Use rates:
Winter ON peak $0.132/kWh (7am to 11am and 5pm to 7pm)
Winter OFF peak $0.065/kWh (7pm to 7am and holidays and weekends)
Winter MID peak $0.095/kWh (11am to 5pm)
There are a number of additional monthly charges:
Service Charge $16.00
Smart metering 0.79
Deferred Variance acct 0.10
etc, etc.
I have attached the whole story if you actually care about my rates. Residential stuff is on page 9 of the attachment.
For my most recent bill these special charges amount to $60.70. Then there is HST (a VAT flavoured tax) of 13%. Further, in an effort to purchase votes our government provides a rebate of 8% using borrowed money.
To Steve303:
I assume that you're referring to what my local utility calls "Distribution Loss Factor (DLF)". In order to make things simpler for dumb taxpayers that item has been removed from bills. However, if you consult the relevant Ontario Energy Board (OEB) filings it is currently 1.0441. Due to improvements in their low voltage distribution this is a reduction from a DLF of 1.0494 in the previous OEB rate order.
In case you are wondering, I am very involved with local energy policy/politics and was a registered intervenor at the latest OEB hearings.