Hello all.. I am brand new to this and would like some advise.. project: I want to build a light duty lathe to polish and clean pool cue shafts.. Simplicity and costs are concerns.. This lathe will be located in a retail environment so I will need to make it look good and operate.. due to aesthetics and cost I was wondering if it is possible to use a stepper motor as the spindle motor for the lathe ? Will a constant rpm damage the motor ? could heat become an issue ? I would like to make it variable speed.... the highest rpm would probably be around 2500 rpm.. My idea is to use v-slot as the rail.. mounted on HDPE ( 1 inch thick ) .. Thanks in advance J
Hi, Stepper motors are nice for very low rpm - but 2500 is far too much for most. The usual rpm range is 0 to about 500 rpm with usual, not too expensive electronics. Christian
You might want to look into servo motors instead of steppers. The torque a stepper is able to produce also drops as RPM increases, servo motor would be a much better choice. They come in the same frame sizes Nema 34 etc... they're designed to spin at a much faster rate and usually have gear or belt reduction units attached to operate as motion control for CNC's. They're designed for constant operations and they do get a bit hot, just put a good heavy CPU fan/heat sink on it. You can get them with just the driver, motor, and control board just do a quick search on Ebay... You also could adapt a brushless motor and ESC for RC or quadcopter use, just size the motor right and use a servo tester hooked up to the ESC to control the speeds... Just a thought...
Thank you very much for your replies.. I am looking into the servo motor idea now.. Then into the RC motor idea.. Both seem solid ideas.. I did some research and 1500 rpm should do the trick.. 2500 was a bit high of an estimate .. Trying to learn sketchup now and I will post my idea.. Thank you!! J
Not sure if you found a suitable motor or not yet but I came across these brushless DC motors and wasn't sure if you knew about them. They look like they would work perfectly for what you would like. http://www.automationtechnologiesinc.com/products-page/nema23 Anyway let us know how your coming along.. Gerald
