Slowing down the Jet 1442

Jet without damage to it.

but will it cause damage to the motor?

slower for larger pieces.

Just wondering, but why wouldn't you want your question and the efforts of those that attempt to help you to be kept in the archives? Others may have the same questions you do and might profit from the answers generated.

As far as the light switch dimmer goes, there is a grand reason why it won't work, but the exact electrical details escape me. There have been other discussions on using light dimmers for rheostats to control tools, and they have all been negative.

Here's the reason there are archives, and how they work for mutual benefit of all here:

A simple search of the woodworking newsgroup turned up that group of messages in about a second. You can search the archives any non binary newsgroup quickly with Google to find mountains of info on just about any subject.

Robert

I believe that the Jet 1442 motor is a standard type induction motor. This type of motor is frequency dependent - it's speed is governed by the power line frequency. Trying to reduce the voltage being fed to it won't change the speed until the motor's power reduces to the point where it doesn't have enough power to keep up with the power frequency. If a load is applied and the motor cannot rotate at the speed governed by the power line frequency the motor will likely overheat and burn up very quickly.

If you want to change the speed bad enough you can either buy a 3 phase motor and a variable frequency drive to run it, or a DC motor and a DC (direct current) power supply for it. Either way you will be spending hundreds of dollars to get this capability.

Charley

the Jet without damage to it.

doable but will it cause damage to the motor?

slower for larger pieces.

Robert, Thanks for the reply.

Well I am not sure about the archive thing. I had a friend help set me up with this program and I'll look into it if helps others.

Other than that I thought I might get some first hand experience from some of the regulars here.

Guess next time I will look elsewhere before asking here.

Jimbo

You know, I can't imagine what else you want. I asked politely, pointed out why the archives are important, did the search for you and even provided a hot link to click.

There is a tremendous amount of information attached to that link. All you have to do is read.

Robert

the Jet without damage to it.

doable but will it cause damage to the motor?

slower for larger pieces.

Jimbo,

Don't take offence. Robert may have assumed a higher level of IT expertise than was appropriate in the terseness of his comment about archiving.

Every news posing has a "header" that not many people see very often and few people care about. In the header to your post is the line: X-No-Archive: yes which is a request that you message is not stored in archives.

That is rarely the default setting (which may be why Robert assumed that you had done this deliberately). The best of the internet works by "share and share alike". By having "no archive" it gives the appearance that you are taking more from the net than you are prepared to give, which is not the best netiquette.

Also from the header of your posing we can see that you are using: X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 4.0/32.1071

Do a search on Forte Help for something like "Prevent Usenet messages from being archived (X-No-Archive)" and you will find out how to enable/disable archiving.

Note that setting X-No-Archive is just a /request/ to not archive the message. Some archives will ignore this heading, so it is no guarantee that your message will not be archived - it does little to help protect your on-line identity.

Cheers Andy

On May 18, 2:14 am, Andy Webber >

than was appropriate in the >terseness of his comment about archiving.

No offense was intended. I didn't even think it was that terse since I started with "Just wondering..."

C'mon Jimbo... I posted a link... just two clicks...

Oh well.

But a great follow up post, Andy. That should get him up to speed.

Robert

450 appears to be the limit on 60 Hz. You can do a few things in preparation for turning which will help you use this speed even at over-the-bed capacity. Cutting a good circle to begin with, then nibbling away irregularity at the bandsaw is the best route to go. If a log section curves up on either side, there's little reason to have those lumps on the end to beat your bearings to death, eh? It is mass times velocity squared, so equalize mass difference as best you can, even though it's the lesser value.

Be careful if you're making your blanks from green wood to avoid the imbalance that comes from cutting 90 degrees to the ground as found. Water gravitates to the bottom half of the log, and you'll end up with a couple of one-side wet pieces instead of one wetter, one dryer if you don't take care.

Always use the tailstock, and make best use of your headstock hold by going with a faceplate, pin chuck or at the very least a counterbore for your spur center to keep it from throwing.

There are a bunch of folks who wish they had the capacity of your lathe, so think of them, not the ones who look down from their Oneways and Stubbys as you put it to best use.

Slow is not without cost. Below the 360 on my lathe I find myself reacting and running in and out on rough surfaces. Impatience perhaps, but certainly because the rotation brings things around slower than I can react to changes in the surface.

Guess I forgot to thank you for the link. Like I said.. next time.

I think the problem I ran into was as you say, with the water ending up on one side of the log. I had some large eucalypse that I could really never get to spin true.

I think I will stick with what can be done as it is and not mess with it.

Thanks for everyones input. And Andys help on removing the X-No-Archive.

As others have noted, the dimmer switch is probably a bad idea, but depending on how badly you want the thing to go slower, I've got an option for you.

It you get yourself a left-hand tap that matches your headstock spindle on the outboard side, you could laminate a couple of pieces of plywood together to make a big pulley. Tap the center, and thread it on to the spindle, then turn it to the size desired and turn the groove for the v-belt.

Then, get yourself another motor. It doesn't have to be fancy, and a lot of lathes don't have a huge amount of horsepower. If you were to dig up something like a 1/3 or 1/2 hp electric motor from an old appliance, that might do the trick.

You'll have to mount the motor to something, and get a small pulley on it. When you want to turn slow, release the tension on your main belt so that the spindle will turn easily, and won't burn up your main belt, and hook up the secondary motor.

A regular electric motor turns at 3450 rpm, IIRC. Reduction in speed is a direct ratio between the two pulley sizes. Don't hold me to the math, but if you were to have a 2" pulley on your secondary motor, and a 20" pulley on the outboard side of your lathe, you should get a spindle speed of 345 rpm. You get the idea, anyhow- the larger the difference between the small pulley on the motor and the large pulley on the spindle, the slower the lathe will turn.

It'd be kind of a goofy looking contraption, but it's pretty straightforward and can be done cheap- without risking damage to your lathe's original motor. If you want it going really slow, with smaller pulleys, make a double or triple-reduction setup, mounted on a bit of plywood or a board. If you need the slow speed for outboard turning, put the pulley on the inboard side with a right-hand tap.

Or, skip the tap entirely, and mount the pulley on a faceplate- whichever makes more sense to you. If you're really safety concious, make a plexiglass guard to cover the pulleys and belt.

That would be the way I'd do it, if I wanted to do such a thing.

Hi Jimbo, If your purpose is to slow down your lathe for starts from near zero and gradual ramp ups, but not for slow speed turning, sanding or drilling, you may want to consider slipping the belt as a clutch. Gradually tightening or loosening the belt while standing at the lathe is easy to do on the Jet mini and an extra belt is relatively cheap. Don't know about the 1442.

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter

"Prometheus" wrote: (clip) A regular electric motor turns at 3450 rpm, IIRC. (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Most fractional HP motors run at half that speed: 1725. If your motor does actually run at 3450, you can cut the speed in half easily by just changing motors. However, most lathe manufacturers try to provide as low a speed as they can with a practical pulley ratio and the more common motor RPM.

Rather than going to the trouble of mounting an extra motor, with all its complications, consider the possibity of mounting a countershaft and using the same motor.

I would start looking for a lathe that runs slower, or shopping for a variable speed drive.

Leo, Arch too, the 1442 is a Reeves. Neither idea put forward works particularly easily or well.

Shopping will.

Prometheus has a good idea and it does sound like a lot of work. I do however have an extra motor from my old lathe - montgomery wards power-craft. I think would rather turn more at this point than try to add extra pulleys.

I will keep my larger wood pieces until such time I either get more ambitious to try the pulley scenerio or spend $$$ for the right lathe.

Thanks eveyone!

Jimbo

Jimbo,

Since everyone else is jumping in, I will too.

I drive the same lathe as you do, and I've been turning some big bowl blanks (about 30 to 40#. ) They are roughed with a chainsaw, I don't have a bandsaw.

My method is to mount the blank between two pointed centers, with minimum friction. Result, the heavy side goes to the bottom. Then I raise one end of the work, a little bit, and reinsert the center, and see where the heavy spot is. Sometimes it takes a while, but I finally end up locating the points where the piece is in balance. I can spin it by hand, and it stops wherever it wants, no consistency.

Next, I lag screw on a faceplate, centered on one of the points. This always disturbs the equilibrium a bit, but it's doable.

Then I crank the tailstock center into the wood, make SURE the speed is down at the low level, stand out of the way, pull up my socks and flip the switch. The machine always vibrates, but not too badly.

In about 10 minutes of cutting, I can remove most of the off center material, at which time the machine stops vibrating and my pucker factor goes down.

I'm finding that large bowls are good for occasional fun, but I prefer smaller stuff.

Old Guy

"Old guy" wrote in news:8664i.63689$n_.11928@attbi_s21: Listen to 'old guys'

Right on except, when you pull up socks, make sure you cinch up your belt. Learnt that from an old guy when I wasn't even a young guy (all my hair was on my head). Hank

That's the same decision I came to when I was given two huge chunks of cherry*. They have been slowly drying in a corner of my basement for three years now. I figure that by the time I have the skills to do justice to them I will probably also have the equipment.

So far I am still turning on a HF 12x36. :-(

Bill

*Yeah, that counts as a gloat. They are coffee-table sized and ~6" thick. Not sure if they are going to end up as flat work or turned ... but, done well, either I'm going to have something my sons will fight over when I'm gone or somebody else is going to give me a lot of money for seizing an opportunity labeled "free firewood".

I tuned in rather late in this thread, but caught up a moment ago. My 2 cents worth:

My 1442 seems to be appropriate in motor speed for the types of turnings I do. A lot of rhetoric is expended w/r/t spindle speed and the desirability of slowing down. Personally I can't imagine why you'd want to slow the lathe down significantly, particularly if you're turning stock appropriate to the dimensions of the machine. About the largest bowl I've turned is slightly less than 12" finished size. That's actually a fairly large bowl, and attempting to go much larger on a 1442 would seem imprudent. For roughing out that bowl I took the speed lever out of the far left detent and turned it as far left as it would go without jamming the Reeves mechanism. This probably dropped the spindle speed about 50 rpm at most, and while it was adequate for turning a 14" rough piece of wet maple, I'm sure I could have roughed it out at the last detent as well.

The 1442 is hardly a be-all, end-all lathe. It is a fine beginner's tool, and has taught me much as well as allowing me to develop my turning skills and have a lot of fun. I'm more than ready for a larger machine, but can't for the life of me come up with sufficiently good 'excuses' for spending an additional $4K+ at this time. I will buy a larger, more capable machine some day, and I've been looking at them all with that in mind. But the 1442 still does everything I ask of it, provided I don't attempt to exceed its capability. You chose a great lathe--learn to use it as it was intended and you'll be rewarded with many hours of fun and learning experience. If you must slow down, I'd suggest another lathe. Modifying your 1442 to run very slowly could conceivably cost as much as the lathe itself.

Max