There is a shop down the road from me shutting down their furniture production facility and the owner has offered to give me a nice 52” wide belt sander for free if I move it. This thing is a beast and I would love to have it in my shop I just don’t know what my options are for running a 440v 3ph machine in my shop. I have 400amp single phase service and a couple of large RPC’s. I believe this thing is 40hp single head so only one motor. I will have to double check on the hp. It may actually be 20HP I can’t recall off hand.

My question to you guys is...would it be possible to have someone like Jack Forsberg to make a VFD capable of running this thing? Would a VFD be capable of bringing the voltage down? I priced a transformer at a little under $3,000. One of my RPC’s is 100hp so it would be capable once I get it installed. I just got this RPC so it’s not up and going yet.

If a VFD isn’t the best route on this for the money I could spend the $3k on a transformer and I am sure that I would have to spend at least another $1k on a switch to turn it on and off. What do you guys think?