Super X3 motor problems
Posted by
John Stevenson
on 2006-02-25 03:33:31 UTC
This post is being cross posted to thee relevant groups so sorry if you read it more than once.
A bit of history.
There is a bulk buy being setup to get certain machines from Sieg in China.
On of these is the Super X3 which it has turned out has motor problems.
Posts to the Seig group on Yahoo are being moderated so that buyers can't see the problems hence the cross posting, isn't the internet wonderfull..........
Copy below**********************************
I have been looking at some of the past post on the SiegX3 group and the Lathmaster group and come across a few references to the motor fault being caused by
certain switches [ e-stop ? ] being placed in a transit position to cause this staring problem.
Vaso has had this problem, I didn't come across a staring problem when I tried one out at Arc Euro in the UK, it was just gutless,
the proverbial Monty Python dead parrot.
Arc has had two different tech's look at this machine they had, both very competent guys.
I even loaned them a new 2HP VFD to see if they could get the motor working on that but still useless on power.
Now if this so called cure is out there and requires a simple switch to be pressed, pushed or otherwise tweaked don't you think people would have found this?
Another point is if this switch is disabled and it still starts as Vaso found by spinning the spindle by hand then there is an issue with the switch.
Switches are either on or off.
That board in the SX3 isn't just a simple speed board, it has programmable chips on board.
Seig told Arc Euro they could reprogram the chips to put more power out at low revs, just have far up the line this will take to happen if at all is anybodies guess.
The only difference between the X3 and the SX3 is that the SX3 has to features not on the X£, tilting head and this new motor drive.
Well the motor drive has been covered and we are waiting on information to come back.
The tilt can be addressed my converting an existing X3 with the addition of two swivel plates.
Both Chester Machine Tools and Engineers Toolroom in the UK have done this conversion successfully
and it's a damn sight easier to do this to get a tilt machine than mess about with motors, drives, belts and pulleys.
I still feel there is a problem with the motor design even given that the board has problems.
That motor is rated at 1100W, it's a single speed belt drive that should be quieter than the gear driven X3.
The problem is that even working correctly it will lack torque at lower revs, EXACTLY where you need most torque.
For the people who don't know many commercial machining centres do this, use one motor, one speed and control it electronically.
It make sense from a control point of view. HASS is one, but have you ever wondered why they use a 25 HP spindle motor on a machine not much larger than a Bridgeport?
The answer is that at low speed they are left with about 8 or 9 HP worth of torque, which is what they want.
If they had used a 10 HP motor at low speed they woud have finished up with just a couple of horsepower.
This will be the problem with this machine with no mechanical means of increasing torque.
It's a trade off of top speed verus high speed.
This isn't sour grapes it's pure fact. We build ink mixing machines that work along the same lines.
We need bags of torque at low revs to get the thick ink mixing but also high speed to ensure the mix works well.
We use geared motors to get low speed torque and over speed via an invertor to get the high spped.
Unfortunatly althought it works for us we are in a 150 to 1,000 rev bracket.
Far too small for a milling machine which leads me to point out that the SX3 has lowered the stated speed to 1750 rpm in the UK on 50~ supply
This is far too low for a machine this size proving that speed ranges are not designed right.
The next issue to address is Why are there no SX£3's in the US to buy ?
Does anybody know that Grizzly etc have not had and demo machines and made the decision not to go this route?
That is what has happened in the UK.
John S.
This e-mail was scanned for viruses using BitDefender
A bit of history.
There is a bulk buy being setup to get certain machines from Sieg in China.
On of these is the Super X3 which it has turned out has motor problems.
Posts to the Seig group on Yahoo are being moderated so that buyers can't see the problems hence the cross posting, isn't the internet wonderfull..........
Copy below**********************************
I have been looking at some of the past post on the SiegX3 group and the Lathmaster group and come across a few references to the motor fault being caused by
certain switches [ e-stop ? ] being placed in a transit position to cause this staring problem.
Vaso has had this problem, I didn't come across a staring problem when I tried one out at Arc Euro in the UK, it was just gutless,
the proverbial Monty Python dead parrot.
Arc has had two different tech's look at this machine they had, both very competent guys.
I even loaned them a new 2HP VFD to see if they could get the motor working on that but still useless on power.
Now if this so called cure is out there and requires a simple switch to be pressed, pushed or otherwise tweaked don't you think people would have found this?
Another point is if this switch is disabled and it still starts as Vaso found by spinning the spindle by hand then there is an issue with the switch.
Switches are either on or off.
That board in the SX3 isn't just a simple speed board, it has programmable chips on board.
Seig told Arc Euro they could reprogram the chips to put more power out at low revs, just have far up the line this will take to happen if at all is anybodies guess.
The only difference between the X3 and the SX3 is that the SX3 has to features not on the X£, tilting head and this new motor drive.
Well the motor drive has been covered and we are waiting on information to come back.
The tilt can be addressed my converting an existing X3 with the addition of two swivel plates.
Both Chester Machine Tools and Engineers Toolroom in the UK have done this conversion successfully
and it's a damn sight easier to do this to get a tilt machine than mess about with motors, drives, belts and pulleys.
I still feel there is a problem with the motor design even given that the board has problems.
That motor is rated at 1100W, it's a single speed belt drive that should be quieter than the gear driven X3.
The problem is that even working correctly it will lack torque at lower revs, EXACTLY where you need most torque.
For the people who don't know many commercial machining centres do this, use one motor, one speed and control it electronically.
It make sense from a control point of view. HASS is one, but have you ever wondered why they use a 25 HP spindle motor on a machine not much larger than a Bridgeport?
The answer is that at low speed they are left with about 8 or 9 HP worth of torque, which is what they want.
If they had used a 10 HP motor at low speed they woud have finished up with just a couple of horsepower.
This will be the problem with this machine with no mechanical means of increasing torque.
It's a trade off of top speed verus high speed.
This isn't sour grapes it's pure fact. We build ink mixing machines that work along the same lines.
We need bags of torque at low revs to get the thick ink mixing but also high speed to ensure the mix works well.
We use geared motors to get low speed torque and over speed via an invertor to get the high spped.
Unfortunatly althought it works for us we are in a 150 to 1,000 rev bracket.
Far too small for a milling machine which leads me to point out that the SX3 has lowered the stated speed to 1750 rpm in the UK on 50~ supply
This is far too low for a machine this size proving that speed ranges are not designed right.
The next issue to address is Why are there no SX£3's in the US to buy ?
Does anybody know that Grizzly etc have not had and demo machines and made the decision not to go this route?
That is what has happened in the UK.
John S.
This e-mail was scanned for viruses using BitDefender