Craftsman VS Lathe

[Jeff Belany]

I know failures of this lathe have come up before and I have searched past posts about these problems. But, once the electronic circuit boards became unavailable, most seemed to turn them into boat anchors. I have one that always worked well until it died suddenly. I don't use a big lathe very often (I have 3 small lathes) but occasionally I need a larger lathe. I can't afford to buy a new one and my first thought was this -- I have a fairly decent (for me) 36" lathe with a 90V DC motor, why not find a DC motor control to run it. I checked around and found a couple (KB Electronicss KBC 125 or KBCC 240D) that filled the bill as far as voltage, amperage and it would seem to be pretty simple to hook up 2 AC power wires and 3 wires to the DC motor. I may or may not put them inside the lathe case but maybe just in an external box.

I will admit I'm not an expert with electronics but have done a fair amount of wiring. My question is this -- am I missing something about this? It seems pretty simple to do but in the several forums I have gone over no one seems to have tryed this that I have seen. The cost is less than $100 and before I spend the money I hoped someone with more knowledge than me could offer some advise. Any one have an thoughts?

Thanks to you all for great information on this forum.

Jeff in northern Wisconsin

[Roger Chandler]

Jeff,

I had the Craftsman 217170 15" VS lathe, and the motor and controller were fine on mine.......the headstock had a mechanical [gear driven] way of reducing the speed of the motor which was a DC motor [10,000 rpm] and when they gear shaft broke on mine, I tried to find used, tried to have a machine shop [actually 3 of them] reproduce the part, and Sears could not get one for me, so it became like you say a boat anchor. I gave it to a salvage yard for scrap metal.

If one had knowledge to understand how to correctly wire the thing, it might be worth it, but if another part fails, then you still will end up with a useless lathe. Good luck!