I have owned a General 260-20 from the mid-80's for about 8 years. It's a decent heavy lathe with a Reeves variable speed belt drive. I have been doing more turning of late and roughing out larger green blanks, which has brought home the fact that the speed range of this unit is better suited to spindle turning (although it seems that quite a few pro bowl turners got by with a similar lathe before electronic speed control became common). I was looking for a new or used replacement and on the verge of ordering a REVO 1836 before deciding to stick with the devil I know and keep the cash flow positive.
I replaced the 1 ph 1 1/2 hp 1725 rpm motor with a new surplus 3 ph 2 hp inverter rated one from Dealer's Industrial Equipment and picked up a TECO 7300 CV vectorless sensor vfd with a removable keypad and remote cable from Factorymation, total cost about $600. The removable keypad feature allowed me to mount the drive in the headstock pedestal and the keypad (which has a potentiometer dial) in a wood block secured to the right end of the ways. I added a switch to control the outlet that the lathe plugs into, so now I can switch it off from either side of the headstock.
The inverter works well with good power down to about 6 hz (about 40 rpm on the lowest Reeves setting). I left all the default programmed settings except for enabling the potentiometer, so the spindle accelerates and decelerates over 10 seconds. The TECO manual is pretty straightforward even for a shade tree electrician like me.
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The other weakness of this lathe besides the speed range was that the tailstock, banjo and toolpost clamps had a habit of loosening up, so I had my friend weld extensions to the tailstock and banjo clamp handles and replace the toolpost tommy bar with a longer one. All in all I feel like it was a successful upgrade with a relatively small cash outlay.
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Originally Posted by Kevin Jenness
