Moderately-sized house with an elderly electrical installation and a
60A incomer from the street at the front.
Huge separate shed at the back, previously a bakery, which until a few years ago had 3 phase running to it for the ovens. This was supplied from an overhead pole at the back, which is still there and so close as to have a wayleave for being on the plot. At present there's no credible electricity supply to the shed. The house is likely to need a full re-wire too.
My plan is to use the shed to house vast woodworking machinery, which comes much cheaper (and works a bit better) if it's 3-phase.
There's another shed, adjoining the house. This would need a high current single-phase supply for welder(s). I doubt I'll ever go for a
3-phase welder.
So, what's to do?
Plan A: Have the house feed uprated to 80A or 100A single phase. Rewire house. Run armoured cable u/g to each shed. Run phone and network cable to shed. Stick with single phase machinery. Ignore crazy ideas like single to 3-phase rotary converters. Buy expensive motors to convert new machines from 3 to 1.
Plan B: Have the 3 phase supply to the shed re-instated. Pay some no-doubt considerable amount for the same.
Wire the isolated shed woodworking rig from the 3 phase, wondering whether I'm going to be paying commercial electrician rates to have it done.
Rewire the house anyway, as it needs it.
Wire the "welding" shed alongside the house from somewhere, either the house or the shed supply.
Watch the data cables explode when there's an argument over earth potentials.
Any advice or experience to share? Plan B is obviously attractive and gives the "best results", but the process of achieving it is likely to be more complicated and expensive.
I spose there is also the option of taking three phase to the big shed and then powering everything else from there - including the house. Much will probably come down to tariffs and you are going to be charged for the 3ph. If you can get it as a domestic supply, charged for in the normal way then that would seem to give you most options.
No need. Ethernet over copper within large buildings doesn't have any problems when the equipment at each end of the cable is on different phases of the same supply, or even different supplies. All twisted pair ethernet equipment has isolating transformers built-in.
They are completely isolated from the PC case and able to float free of earth potentials. Most home routers are without earth anyway, using a double insulated wallwart type supply.
I looked at this issue when purchasing my Felder machine - they have single and three phase motor options. Three phase would actually not have been that difficult to get from the electricity supplier either although it was still going to several £k.
In the end I had the main supply uprated to 100A and ran an 80A service to the workshop, keeping single phase.
I did quite a bit of research into the issues and talked to numerous people as well. As you say, there was not a lot of enthusiasm to run with rotary converters.
Felder's approach for single phase is to keep with three phase motors but to equip the machine with an electronic drive which produces three phase from single phase. The actual machine has three motors (saw, spindle, planer) and the electronic drive is switched between them. Each has a separate speed control - these are switched in also. Finally the electronic drive has the characteristics of the motors programmed and also handles the electronic braking of the motors - the saw spins down in a couple of seconds. Altogether it works very well and the speed control is certainly useful.
The same technique could be used for multiple machines quite easily using a single electronic drive and switch, assuming that you are a one person operation. Some people have these for individual machines for example.
For the bandsaw I didn't bother - the single phase option is fine - and the lathe has its own speed control arrangement.
So I would agree with you that rotary converters are not a good solution, but electronic drives are very viable and with the speed control and braking facility could be part of a solution to make an older machine able to stop more quickly.
They use a few different manufacturers. Mine has one made by Lenze, a
6kW device. I believe they cost a few hundred pounds as a In addition to the functions mentioned, these have various analogue and digital inputs that are designed for attachment of temperature probes for the motors and for the numerous safety interlock switches around the machine.
One other advantage of the speed control is in connection with the spindle moulder. There is an arrangement to make a quick change between the standard 30mm spindle and a high speed router spindle and then the speed control can be used to wind the speed of it up to
15000rpm which is enough for most of the small cutters that I tend to use. It's meant that I've been able to no longer need a router table.
There's no way I can afford an electronic drive, except possibly a small VFD for a shaper feeder. If I'm spending that much, I'll go straight for a 3 phase supply - inverters are still _serious_ money!
I've had pretty good results with rotary inverters to date, but they do need a good single phase supply to them - they won't create power out of thin air, as is often believed by those who seem to think they'll deliver the same supply current to each phase!
That may be the only option. Some suppliers won't allow 2 supplies onto the same site now, even if they are separately switched and metered. It helps prevent their engineers going !bang! when someone loops 2 lives together to parallel the supplies. :-)
Hi Andy - I'm interested in your "high end" combination machine.
Can I encourage you to write a review of it?
I've always been a bit averse to combinations because of the set up time to change operations and that there's often quite a compromise on the size of timbers they can handle. However that Felder looks distinctly different with the level of automation, and a very high quality & substantial build to it.
What sort of work do you mainly use it for? What's does it struggle at, if anything?
That's what I'm wondering. Has anyone got recent experience of what the costs are likely to be for this?
Lat time I looked, it was pretty reasonable - and that was for a much longer drop, crossing a couple of properties. This one is within arm's reach of the rear wall.
I looked at a lot of different machinery and also researched and talked to a lot of people to zero in on choices. My criteria were to go for good quality items that would be able to produce very good results consistently and which I would expect to last 20-30 years or more. The usage wasn't to be industrial but might become become more than regular hobby as a retirement activity or something like that at some point in the future.
In particular, I looked at the debate between combination machines and separates in terms of setup times and capacity as well as workshop patterns of use in general together with footprint. Part of this has to be calibrated with application, location of user and common practice in that location. For example, the "industry standard" in North America is the Delta Unisaw and its kin with rip fences and wooden cross cut sleds running in grooves. Combination machines are pretty much a European phenomenon. Therefore, while I might consider American comment on combination machines, it is from a background where most people haven't really used one so has to be considered in that light.
With all of that in mind, I began to look carefully at the combination machine criticisms and advantages:
- Where would there be change over issues and how long would they take?
- If I do have to make a change, can I easily return to the previous operation without having to do all of the setups again?
- How long does it take to do setups in comparison to separate machines?
- If I decide, down the road that I would prefer spearate machines after all, can I do that?
- Can I still move the machine around if I have to do so?
- Are there limitations on sizes of material that can be handled as a result of combination machine rather than separates?
- Are there any advantages of combination machine?
The obvious places to check for setup time effect was where one part of the machine would be in the way when doing a different operation or when one piece of mechanics is used for more than one purpose. In that respect, on the Felder 700 series, the spindle moulder and saw are mutually exclusive - i.e. you can't have them both ready for business at the same time. Equally, the planer/thicknesser uses a drum with cast tables above and a cast platform below for the thicknesser function.
For doing planing or thicknessing operations, the saw and spindle can stay in place because the material isn't worked on that far away. Similarly the spindle can be used without interfering with the planer.
Up to a point, and for many sawing operations, the planer fence and guard can be left in place for two reasons. Firstly, the fence can be positioned as a rip fence almost all the way across to the planer, so many cuts can work that way. Secondly, there is a sliding table and outrigger. These can be used with the material positioned well to the left of the blade. I tend to use this arrangement with parallel fence stops, pneumatic clamps on the sliding table and no rip fence. It's fast and accurate. However, if I do need to cut a large sheet with support of the main table, I can remove the planer fence and drop the cutter block and planer guard with a couple of lever operations. Then I have a very large cast iron surface for support.
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the spindle moulder, the guard/fence assembly can be removed with two levers. It has locating pins and can be returned to the previous position with no adjustment required.
Going between thicknesser and planer is a bit more work but still fast. The planer cast tables are unlocked (2 Kipp levers) and lifted. The dust extraction hood is turned over to be above the cutter block since planing is below. The thicknesser table is raised to the working position and clamped and work can commence - whole operation less than a minute.
There are up/down adjustments for the saw, spindle and thicknesser table and tilt adjustments for the saw and spindle. Some of these can be fitted with electric positioners so that a previous height setting can be remembered and selected again. Apparently these are qute popular for the U.S. market with about 50% of machines bought with them. Here in Europe they are not so popular. The positioner options are quite expensive for what they are - they don't move the item much faster than can be done with the handwheels, so I didn't bother. Each adjustment has a handwheel with a gauge in the centre and I can reproduce a previous setting easily to an accuracy of 0.1 or
0.2mm very quickly also. The whole machine has remained precise over a long period and I do check that periodically.
So all in all, I can accommodate large material and switch between operations quickly and easily. For this machine series, Felder have put in a lot of attention to these kind of details. On this series, it is also possible to separate the saw/spindle from the planer/thicknesser if I wanted to do that in the future, Weight isn't too much of an issue - although the machine weighs about a tonne all up, there is a rolling carriage and operating jack for the rare occasions that a move is needed.
Felder make a selection of product ranges. At the high end are the industrial Format 4 and Kappa machines. The 700 series is as described. They have recently introduced the 500 series which brings a lower price point than the starting point of the 700 series. Finally there is Hammer, which is still a very good and solid machine but which doesn't have some of the setting faciities and flexibility.
I should have added that there is a detailed video showing the machine operation and building of a desk. It's about 850MB but not unreasonable to download using "broadband".
The video is dubbed from German into English and hence does creak a little in places but does give a good detailed explanation.
I used to wear a workshop apron at school for woodwork lessons (as required in the school rules (and particularly by 'Basher' Bates)). Perhaps that's why I only scored a Grade 2 at 'O' level...
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