Treadmill Motor Drive

[Dave C]

Hi,
I have been reading on the web about treadmill motors being installed on machine tools and I would like to do this to my milling machine that runs on an old ac motor with a drive belt and v pullys. I have aquired two treadmill motors and would like some help on building variable speed drives. The motors are rated at 180Vdc, 4000RPM, current of 6A and 1.5kW.

Can anybody help me with a circuit digram or point me in the right direction.

Small and simple is best as vibration may be an issue.

Regards
Dave

 

[poor mystic]

Hi Dave!
This is not a trivial exercise. Designing and building a circuit to do the job at all is a big effort, then comes the killer 180V DC, which is not safe for unskilled play! It's on the edge of requiring a professional system for other reasons too.

So. Let's get a more homemade kind of plan happening.
How much power is actually required? Couldn't the work be positioned using worm drives? Worm drives can be powered using low voltage motors which are easy and safe to work with. You can always use gearboxes too. There need be no sacrifice of accuracy; all that is sorted out in the control circuitry.
If you were using a safer voltage then all you'd be asking the forum is how to build a control circuit. As it is, playing with those potentials, I'd be too worried about you to advise you to proceed at all.

Have a look at a CNC mill setup in an engineering shop if you want to see how it's really done. Usually CNC mills are powered by stepping motors, so that digital control comes almost naturally. Have a look, see what size of unit would suit your job, and contact an electronics parts wrecker once you know more about what you want.

Keep us posted!