My lathe currently has a 1 hp motor. The three phase motor from Amazon is 1.5 hp and the vfd is 2.2 kw, about 3 hp rating. It all looks good on paper. Start and stop frequency is interesting. I suppose like most home lathes this one gets very light duty. You face the part, turn it to size, drill a hole in the end, ream the hole, thread a tap into it, part it off and call it a piston. Find out that it is too small for the cylinder because you misread the micrometer and do it all again. There is some starting and stoping in all that. Very light cuts however.
My small lathe has a 1HP motor. I leave the belts settings so a 60Hz motor would drive it at 390RPM per the existing chart. I do all sorts of tapping and die threading without ever changing over to back gear now with a Mitsubishi FR-E720-110-NA drive I got off eBay a few years ago. As I said in a previous post this replaced the Teco Flux Master 100. That old drive was NOT a vector type, not only would it cog at low speeds, but also stall out. I've done threading without backgear and could rotate the lathe spindle down to 3RPM with no stall. In tap and die sizes up to 7/16", but I know could go larger without using the back gear. I did just break a 8mm tap the other day, it was almost to the last thread, I had to put a bigger tap wrench on it part ways through. I'm blaming it on a dull tap, as I was doing mystery aluminum (could have been 2024 or 7075, and not 6061). My point is, it will develop high torque at very low spindle RPM for threading. And with the VFD set for max 120Hz operation, my spindle at this setting is over 750RPM. If I need faster, I can change the belts to exceed 2200 RPM.
On my vertical mill, a Wells-Index, I have a Hitachi SJ200. The belt setting on that are for 1300RPM when driven from a 60Hz powered motor. I was just using it with the VFD driving 300RPM to a 1 inch 2 flute endmill machining cast iron, that was very hard on a C-clamp that never had the foot where the clamp screw swivel meets up with flat, as it still had the casting pattern draft. So every time you clamped things, it would swing over at an angle. I fixed 14 clamps of 10 inch and 8 inch size last night. I was machining about .060 material off. It is so easy to dial in the spindle speed on these drives, as they both have the feature.
If you have to pay full price for a quality VFD, I would do that before buying an unknown drive, as in post #25 that Amazon link looks again like the same Huanyang design and not a vector design. Huanyang eBay auctions used to indicate they purchased the processors from Hitachi, as a puffing statement, which may be true, but probably 25 year old technology. Full price from a wholesale seller is maybe 2X to 2.5X of that cheap Huanyang drive. But when it out lasts you, and does what is needed, you'll be happy.
On a side story, I purchased a 1HP motor and drive from Dealers Electric ~25 years ago. This was a 1HP 3phase motor, inverter duty, and the Teco FM100 drive. The shaft on the motor was too large, so I removed the rotor, machined the shaft down to the metric diameter that fit my sheave Vbelt pulley. As this was for 2 vbelt diameters for the primary motor to jackshaft speed reduction. So after about 15 years, the shaft on the motor broke off. It was from vibration as the cast iron sheave was never concentric to the vbelt diameters. And when I did the shaft diameter reduction, I left a sharp inside edge on the shaft, as that is where it snapped off. At the time I didn't have a radius ground on the lathe bit. I've replaced that motor with a used one off eBay, and had to make a new mount for it, as it was a C-face mount motor, and had no foot base. My small lathe is a 10x24 Jet and 1HP is plenty. So part of the repair was making the sheave motor shaft to vbelt grooves concentric. I also changed over from rubber vbelts to the link style belts. Much quieter and smoother operation.
So ebay search with any drive of 220, 230, 240 selected, and only selecting known manufactures for 2HP I get the following search:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_oa...ed%20Load=2%20HP&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_PrefLoc=3I hope this link on your computer, and selecting Canadian item location produces an affordable drive. I could only sort on North American location.
The only down side, is if the seller does not properly indicate the voltage of the drive, you will never see the listing. If you can't find the full manual online before purchase, don't buy it. Also verify the full model number of the sellers listing to the manual, and validate it is the correct voltage input.
post edit: Also search for 3-10HP motors, there may be a deal available.
