platinum series 18/47. I may be getting a serious upgrade from the big man and looked at this lathe alongside the powermatic 3520B. there are some differences. PM has 2" more swing but laguna has 10" longer between centers. laguna has reverse. [ not sure an PM ? ] 1100 bucks cheaper for the laguna too!!! what i cant find is spindle size and thread for the laguna. i want to be sure i can get adapters for my oneway chucks. anybody have more info on the lagune other than what is on the website? I know they make great bandsaws and assume the lathes will be of similar quality. thanks
As a PM owner, it sounds interesting, and I would have looked at it if it was around when I got my PM (8 years ago). The biggest difference I can see is that the Laguna has a 2 hp dc motor, while the PM has a 2 hp 3 phase motor with a phase converter. While I have very little knowlege about the actual difference this makes in power and torque, I believe the 3 phase to be the better of the 2. Perhaps some one who knows more can enlighten us both. robo hippy
The use of a DC motor is enough to tell me I don't think I would be interested. They have torque issues at low RPMs (Plus I think Laguna is consistently over priced)
acording to the web site the motor is 3 phase electronically controled variable speed with reverse. runs on single phase power and converts it to 3 PH. powermatic doesnt say weather nit is reversible. ?????
I used to make jewelry and a flex shaft with a range of handpieces. I started out with an AC Foredom motor with a carbon pile foot pedal for varying speed. At low speeds it had almost no torque. I switched the foot pedal speed control to a wire coil rheostat hoping to gain low speed torque. Didn't work as far as I could tell. So when Foredom came out with a DC motor and rectifier foot pedal I tried again. That did the trick. Good torque at about 100 rpms, not noticably different from full rpm torque.
Second anecdotal evidence - Fisher Paykel washing machine uses a DC step motor attached directly to the wash tub - as opposed to the old transmission system of the AC motor approach. The FP unit has a variable spin speed. A full load of damp clothes requires a fair amount of torque to start to spin that weight - and the FP has no problem doing it - with no clunking tranny - and spinds up to pushing 1000 rpms. Clothes come out nearly dry BTW.
Third anecdotal evidence - electric cars - their motors are DC. Accelleration requires low end torque initially - and there's a 0-60 mph in under 6 seconds out there now.
So I'm not sure what DC speed control you've got experience with but my experience hasn't been what you mentioned.
Re: Laguna Tools prices - their main income is from professional production machines. Their hobbyist stuff is the low end of their product line. BUT - when they put their name on a machine it's one they spec'ed or an available one that meets their specs - which are typically pretty high. They want to sell a machine to a customer and only hear from the customer when they want to buy additional machines or upgrade their machines.
remarks on DC versus AC motors are far over simplified:
the motor with the carbon pile was an AC/DC motor, as was the one with the rheostat - series resistance to control speed also limits torque.
Washing machine stepper - I've never heard of a DC stepper, I'm not even sure it's possible to define a stepper as DC or AC - EVERY stepper I've examined has a permanent magnet armature and creates a rotating magnetic field electronically - this is neither a classic DC brush motor nor an AC shaded pole induction motor - so category does not apply
Electric cars - many use PM motors where the armature is magnetized - see above - golf carts from the 50s and 60s used classic DC motors
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