This ^ Absolutely works fine for most requirements, unless you need full power. My 5kW Fritz Werner runs this way, as does my Richmond. If I recall I did strip and rewire the Town Woodhouse, probably because the motor needed a bearing anyway. Long and the short of it, unless you need to be working the thing hard you can get by in Star on 240V, and especially if you run at lower Hz on the drive.
- Thread starter Pawcu
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not done it yet
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I installed an over-rated motor on my mill ( it was 1HP single phase, but would fail to start in high gear, when very cold. Its power is now about 120% of design, so I don’t run it at full power.
Yeah that's why I plan to run it at normal 50Hz... if anything possibly just slow it down in case the wheel does not support the rated default speed, but I guess if I get the right sized wheels I shouldn't have that issue.
I don't like to run my motors over their rated frequency anyways so over speeding is not a concern for me. But thanks for the warning... I did hear about a couple of accidents where the wheel explodes and it implants itself in the wall... Don't really want that :P
I guess they're both bad... Just one is more serious than the otherImplant into the wall is ok.
Implant into your face, not so much
TBH, I have my truck parked next to it... don't want it implanted in the bed of the Hilux either haha Ive personally had a wheel explode and send the workpiece into the wall using my surface grinder, but in my case it was a too tall workpiece and a weak magnet, which tipped during grinding and became longer as it fell over and got dragged into the wheel. I have the original heavy steel guards but it still threw the 2"x2"x4" steel block across the workshop and embedded in a stone wall and there was pinging noises as stone hit things. Its always good to block things in extra well but I still suspect the magnets on my eclipse magnetic chuck have demagnetised with age. It was a proper brown trousers moment but having the guards etc in place and nothing in the ejection zone that mattered meant it wasn't more serious.
I took my hydraulic pump tank out and found similar slime and blockages, but also the motor was rubber mounted on mine, and the rubber mounts were bad, but generic isolation mounts off ebay did the trick and were cheap.
As mine is a Burdette hydraulic automatic machine (predecessor to the eliott's & J&S designs I believe), information is very difficult to find, but eventually I paid for a manual from lathes.co.uk covering it which is a mine of much needed info such as the hydraulic pressure relief valve pressures on the hydraulic system, running temperature of bearings (its a plain spindle with adjustable bronze bushes) etc. Currently I have a blown hydraulic hose in the knee to attend to and am using it manually though, so its a good time to sort any suspect hoses before its all back together and the dro scales etc connected because of course fixing it post assembly is a pain with all the lines and wiring in place hindering access.
That coolant tank will fill back up of black slime pretty quickly, its just how they are but you know they are working when its in the settlement weirs & just a question of housekeeping to manage it.
I have a table I can set up to use it as a centre grinder, I put it crossways on the table, and rotate the workpiece with a rubber round belt round it off to a drive pulley in a cordless drill, and turn it contra the spindle direction and use the surface grinder's Y feed itself to traverse the workarea on the shaft . I've used this to grind in shafts for bespoke stuff, and until I have a centre grinder (not that I really can justify one, but thats machine sickness, when you get that new machine, then there's always the next capability to be on the hunt for) , its handy to have around.
Having a cheap chinese spindexer is handy too, because you can magnet it the chuck or clamp the bed, and set it to a index position to grind on flats or hex etc. Ive used this to grind cutters for my rotary broaches and other stuff. I say cheap, because anything that goes in the worktank inevitably ends up with black grinding slime inside it and I dont want to put a nice tool in there and subject it to this. I also take my mag chuck off for housekeeping because although its a pain to get re-clocked back in accurately, all sorts of horrid stuff gets stuck between the chuck and bed and causes corrosion hidden away otherwise.
I made a wheel balancer similar to the J&S one myself because of the price people were asking for the originals. I set up two precision knife edges up on stands on my surface plate and verified it with a machine level, and I used the surface grinder with the shaft grinding setup to final grind the taper cone shaft for the hub after I had turned it in the lathe, so that it ran really true.
Long post, but the only regret I have is that the burdette takes odd sized hubs and they are really difficult to find, so changing stone between jobs means taking it off the hub rather than swapping hubs, so rebalancing each time, then resurfacing the stone on the machine spindle to make it run true. If I had lots of hubs, I could just dismount the hub and put it one side, then if I need to put it back on I could skip all this. With a J&S you should be able to find more wheel hubs really easily and its useful to grab them when they pop up cheap rather than when you need them.
I took my hydraulic pump tank out and found similar slime and blockages, but also the motor was rubber mounted on mine, and the rubber mounts were bad, but generic isolation mounts off ebay did the trick and were cheap.
As mine is a Burdette hydraulic automatic machine (predecessor to the eliott's & J&S designs I believe), information is very difficult to find, but eventually I paid for a manual from lathes.co.uk covering it which is a mine of much needed info such as the hydraulic pressure relief valve pressures on the hydraulic system, running temperature of bearings (its a plain spindle with adjustable bronze bushes) etc. Currently I have a blown hydraulic hose in the knee to attend to and am using it manually though, so its a good time to sort any suspect hoses before its all back together and the dro scales etc connected because of course fixing it post assembly is a pain with all the lines and wiring in place hindering access.
That coolant tank will fill back up of black slime pretty quickly, its just how they are but you know they are working when its in the settlement weirs & just a question of housekeeping to manage it.
I have a table I can set up to use it as a centre grinder, I put it crossways on the table, and rotate the workpiece with a rubber round belt round it off to a drive pulley in a cordless drill, and turn it contra the spindle direction and use the surface grinder's Y feed itself to traverse the workarea on the shaft . I've used this to grind in shafts for bespoke stuff, and until I have a centre grinder (not that I really can justify one, but thats machine sickness, when you get that new machine, then there's always the next capability to be on the hunt for) , its handy to have around.
Having a cheap chinese spindexer is handy too, because you can magnet it the chuck or clamp the bed, and set it to a index position to grind on flats or hex etc. Ive used this to grind cutters for my rotary broaches and other stuff. I say cheap, because anything that goes in the worktank inevitably ends up with black grinding slime inside it and I dont want to put a nice tool in there and subject it to this. I also take my mag chuck off for housekeeping because although its a pain to get re-clocked back in accurately, all sorts of horrid stuff gets stuck between the chuck and bed and causes corrosion hidden away otherwise.
I made a wheel balancer similar to the J&S one myself because of the price people were asking for the originals. I set up two precision knife edges up on stands on my surface plate and verified it with a machine level, and I used the surface grinder with the shaft grinding setup to final grind the taper cone shaft for the hub after I had turned it in the lathe, so that it ran really true.
Long post, but the only regret I have is that the burdette takes odd sized hubs and they are really difficult to find, so changing stone between jobs means taking it off the hub rather than swapping hubs, so rebalancing each time, then resurfacing the stone on the machine spindle to make it run true. If I had lots of hubs, I could just dismount the hub and put it one side, then if I need to put it back on I could skip all this. With a J&S you should be able to find more wheel hubs really easily and its useful to grab them when they pop up cheap rather than when you need them.
Seadog
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This happened when I was doing some workshop training around 1972. We were making a tap wrench with a ground finish on the jaws. One of tge chaps thought that he could grind the ends by planting them vertically on the chuck. 3/4" square and about 2" long. The instructor took an interest when there was an almighty bang. The brand new wheel was in pieces, and the jaws had left a very impressive dent in the thick end-guard of the grinder.
Thanks for this detailed post! It seems that the more I read the more weird and horrific accidents I hear about SG incidents. Glad to hear at least you weren't hurt!
For the coolant thank I was thinking of just using dionized water... hopefully that will reduce the sludge build-up... I guess time will tell.
And yes I will be taking my time to make sure to replace anything that might need replacing. Haven't done any further progress on this as I have some other odd jobs around the garage but will keep all this in mind
Like your idea of the wheel balancer. I'm still waiting for the seller to message me when he finds the original one... but most probably will charge me my other leg for it...
Will see hehe
I have no formal training on them, we weren't allowed to use them at college because of "insurance reasons", but you do have to treat them with respect, but instead of loosing a finger to a cutting tool, it tends to be stone explosions or things fired out. Although I have read about people getting their fingers stuck between the wheel and the workpiece and them being dragged in and grinding them off or mangling them beyond recognition, I'm terrified of this after seeing some really graphic pictures and dont put my hands anywhere near the worktable when the spindle is on and if I want to measure something the spindle goes off. There's lots of vids on what a bad wheel sounds like with a simple ring test to avoid the most common issues and be mindful of what might happen if something comes loose off the chuck, you can put more stuff downstream of it to "block in" the workpiece on a mag chuck, the more magnet area or support the less likely to move it is and raising the end fence and blocking off that too is a good solid solution. There are some good videos to watch on suburban tool's channel I found useful in the early days that you might if you are still learning (dont know your experience level sorry) & can get past the guy's accent/pace. https://www.youtube.com/@SuburbanToolInc/search?query=grinding are
I use de-ionised water mixed with hydrocut cutting fluid designed for surface grinder use and just top it off with water when needed as the oily bit doesnt evaporate, I'm still on my first 20l drum in 8 years or so. The black slime is the fine particles of grinding dust suspended in the coolant and the material shed from the wheel as it wears (its supposed to do this to expose fresh cutting grains as it works), its there because its doing the job of not letting this become airborne and settle on all the other machines in the workshop, which is a really good thing for me because its in the same room as my other machines. I even dress it with the diamond wet because that's when it sheds the most abrasive.
Tom Lipton has a good video on using a cross table for cylindrical grinding, his is much nicer than mine and I like that he has the diamond sharpner mounted ready setup to grind the wheel as part of it.
I use de-ionised water mixed with hydrocut cutting fluid designed for surface grinder use and just top it off with water when needed as the oily bit doesnt evaporate, I'm still on my first 20l drum in 8 years or so. The black slime is the fine particles of grinding dust suspended in the coolant and the material shed from the wheel as it wears (its supposed to do this to expose fresh cutting grains as it works), its there because its doing the job of not letting this become airborne and settle on all the other machines in the workshop, which is a really good thing for me because its in the same room as my other machines. I even dress it with the diamond wet because that's when it sheds the most abrasive.
Tom Lipton has a good video on using a cross table for cylindrical grinding, his is much nicer than mine and I like that he has the diamond sharpner mounted ready setup to grind the wheel as part of it.
So it's been a while since I posted an update. Truth be told, around two months ago, I started feeling overwhelmed with the garage work. The more effort I put into refurbishing tools, building the workbench, etc., the more I fell into the trap of trying to keep everything perfect and shiny—like you see in all those YouTube videos. Over time, I lost sight of the fact that the garage and the tools are meant to be used, not kept in perfect condition forever. It stopped feeling like a hobby and started to feel more like a second job. I was stressing out rather than enjoying myself.
To cut a long story short, I took a break from the garage for about a month and focused on my other hobbies (PC gaming, mainly World of Warcraft).
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and I’m back in the garage but trying to keep a better balance. I’ve convinced myself not to go overboard. Instead of doing a full restoration, I’m only dismantling the main parts (hydraulic tank, spindle motor, table and potentially the spindle), cleaning them, and painting the areas where the paint has chipped and rust is a risk. Unlike what I originally planned, I’m not going to paint the entire SG. In fact I plan to leave it the same colour as it currently is. Areas that are bound to get dinged up again will just get an oil finish to prevent rust.
As for internal parts, I know this might not sit well with some people, but I’ll only be painting the chipped areas. I'm not sure if this will bite me back in the future and for sure they won’t look perfect, but since these areas will be inside the machine and won’t see the light of day for a long time (hopefully), I’m okay with that. Apologies in advance! My main goal now is to get the SG up and running so I can actually use it… eventually.
Now with that rant over, time for some updates
First order of business was to clean the tank. Like all the other J&S posts, the tank had some not so nice sludge at the bottom.
Thankfully though, the tank is in really good condition so after a deep clean and some paint touch up it came looking well. I did have to remove the sight glass and cleaned that up really nice. TBH I could have left it as is as the oil was still visible but I guess I wanted to have something shiny at least:
Will see how the paint holds up inside the tank.
I then turned my attention to the mounting plate that holds the pump and the motor - that was also full of grime:
As you can see most of the grime is from pieces of the hose that had started breaking down:
As I was cleaning it, paint started stripping off the mount so I decided to give it a new lick of paint:
To cut a long story short, I took a break from the garage for about a month and focused on my other hobbies (PC gaming, mainly World of Warcraft).
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and I’m back in the garage but trying to keep a better balance. I’ve convinced myself not to go overboard. Instead of doing a full restoration, I’m only dismantling the main parts (hydraulic tank, spindle motor, table and potentially the spindle), cleaning them, and painting the areas where the paint has chipped and rust is a risk. Unlike what I originally planned, I’m not going to paint the entire SG. In fact I plan to leave it the same colour as it currently is. Areas that are bound to get dinged up again will just get an oil finish to prevent rust.
As for internal parts, I know this might not sit well with some people, but I’ll only be painting the chipped areas. I'm not sure if this will bite me back in the future and for sure they won’t look perfect, but since these areas will be inside the machine and won’t see the light of day for a long time (hopefully), I’m okay with that. Apologies in advance! My main goal now is to get the SG up and running so I can actually use it… eventually.
Now with that rant over, time for some updates
First order of business was to clean the tank. Like all the other J&S posts, the tank had some not so nice sludge at the bottom.
Thankfully though, the tank is in really good condition so after a deep clean and some paint touch up it came looking well. I did have to remove the sight glass and cleaned that up really nice. TBH I could have left it as is as the oil was still visible but I guess I wanted to have something shiny at least:
Will see how the paint holds up inside the tank.
I then turned my attention to the mounting plate that holds the pump and the motor - that was also full of grime:
As you can see most of the grime is from pieces of the hose that had started breaking down:
As I was cleaning it, paint started stripping off the mount so I decided to give it a new lick of paint:
Next up where the pump and all the other hardware. I was planning to dismantle the pump but it was working pretty well and after a brief talk with my friend, we agreed it makes more sense to just clean it from the outside and pump some diesel through it to clean any old oil. Before:
This was also caked on the outside with the broken hose pieces:
After:
They hydraulic pump motor was also really filthy:
I tried cleaning it as best as I could without wasting too much time on it... it will get filthy again. I did however dismantle it so I could replace the bearings. It requires 2 x 6203 bearings. Apologies for the 'shaky' photo (not sure how I didn't notice it before):
All assembled:
Next to get out was the main spindle motor. Thank you @Smouser for your instructions on your post Pulley was a bit of a b**** to get out but i finally managed. Both the motor pulley and the spindle pulley have a lot of surface rust which has been transferred to the belt. Will definitely need to replace the belt. Somehow I forgot to take pictures of the motor pulley and belt 
Front of the motor was caked in black dust - maybe belt dust? I hope it's not grinding dust:
I will be replacing the bearings on this motor as well. After dismantling:
This was also caked on the outside with the broken hose pieces:
After:
They hydraulic pump motor was also really filthy:
I tried cleaning it as best as I could without wasting too much time on it... it will get filthy again. I did however dismantle it so I could replace the bearings. It requires 2 x 6203 bearings. Apologies for the 'shaky' photo (not sure how I didn't notice it before):
All assembled:
Next to get out was the main spindle motor. Thank you @Smouser for your instructions on your post
Pulley was a bit of a b**** to get out but i finally managed. Both the motor pulley and the spindle pulley have a lot of surface rust which has been transferred to the belt. Will definitely need to replace the belt. Somehow I forgot to take pictures of the motor pulley and belt Front of the motor was caked in black dust - maybe belt dust? I hope it's not grinding dust:
I will be replacing the bearings on this motor as well. After dismantling:
Last edited:
All cleaned up:
I've also rewired this for 220V like the hydraulic pump motor. This way the VFD will be cheaper (which I need at the moment as previously mentioned, I will need 4 of them for this build). At the moment this motor is still disassembled as I need to purchase the bearings for it (2 x 6204)
I've also removed the motor that powers the power rise and fall for the head. This also got disassembled and bearings will be replaced. Some of the paint started stripping on this motor so decided to give it a splash of primer in the area. Since this will be visible I masked off the areas where I didn't want to be painted. Hopefully this will give it a nice contrast as well (not that it matters). Before:
After:
That's it for now. Will hopefully get some more progress done in the coming weeks. Next priority will be to get the bearings and re-assmble the motors, clean some of the other hardware of the spindle motor and also see how best to get around to removing the rust from the motor pulley. Most probably will chuck it in the lathe and remove the majority with a scotchbrite pad and then remove the rest with some rust remover solution. I want to be carefuly not to remove excess material from this. Will also need to do the same for the spindle pulley... after I figure out how to remove it.
Now that I have the specs for all the motors I can also go ahead and purchase all 4 VFDs however I am planning to wait for the 11.11 sale on Aliexpress to hopefully get them for cheaper.
I've also rewired this for 220V like the hydraulic pump motor. This way the VFD will be cheaper (which I need at the moment as previously mentioned, I will need 4 of them for this build). At the moment this motor is still disassembled as I need to purchase the bearings for it (2 x 6204)
I've also removed the motor that powers the power rise and fall for the head. This also got disassembled and bearings will be replaced. Some of the paint started stripping on this motor so decided to give it a splash of primer in the area. Since this will be visible I masked off the areas where I didn't want to be painted. Hopefully this will give it a nice contrast as well (not that it matters). Before:
After:
That's it for now. Will hopefully get some more progress done in the coming weeks. Next priority will be to get the bearings and re-assmble the motors, clean some of the other hardware of the spindle motor and also see how best to get around to removing the rust from the motor pulley. Most probably will chuck it in the lathe and remove the majority with a scotchbrite pad and then remove the rest with some rust remover solution. I want to be carefuly not to remove excess material from this. Will also need to do the same for the spindle pulley... after I figure out how to remove it.
Now that I have the specs for all the motors I can also go ahead and purchase all 4 VFDs however I am planning to wait for the 11.11 sale on Aliexpress to hopefully get them for cheaper.
Thanks Yeah for the most part the machine seems to be in good condition. There is considerable surface rust on the exposed surfaces and also on the guides that the head column rides on but I'd rather not touch those since they need to be properly set up according to the manual. Will see what I will find once I take the table off as well. I took off some of the oil nipples and can confirm that there is no grease in them so at least the previous owner wasn't one of those people that sees a nipple and thinks its for grease.... either that or he never oiled it... oh well xD
Yeah for the most part the machine seems to be in good condition. There is considerable surface rust on the exposed surfaces and also on the guides that the head column rides on but I'd rather not touch those since they need to be properly set up according to the manual. Will see what I will find once I take the table off as well. I took off some of the oil nipples and can confirm that there is no grease in them so at least the previous owner wasn't one of those people that sees a nipple and thinks its for grease.... either that or he never oiled it... oh well xDA little bit of a shorter update this week. As mentioned in my previous posts, the hydraulic hoses had started disintegrating and were really stiff:
First shop I went to didn't have the correct fittings so after talking a bit with my friend we decided that in order to save some time from going to multiple shops and not managing to get new hoses made, it would be easier to 'extract' the fittings from the current hoses and have the shop crimp them on the new hoses:
Once I had gotten the first one out, the rest were relatively easy
New hoses after crimping:
I also managed to get new bearings for both the main spindle motor and powerfeed motor, so those got assembled as well:
Once the motors were sorted, I turned my attention to the spindle pulley. This had a round slotted nut (not sure what the correct term for it is) which was going to be problematic to remove without a proper tool. I could potentially have used a hammer and metal punch to remove it but I didn't want to damage the bearings:
After scrummaging in my scrap pile I found a chopped off bolt and some scrap flat bar which I milled it a bit to make it thinner and made a slot in it to fit over the nut. I then proceeded to weld them together - not the prettiest job but not bad for a few minutes I guess (and it worked pretty well):
Once I had both pulleys off, I tried cleaning them on the lathe but there was too much gunk and rust that the scotchbrite got immediately gunked up. So I first cleaned them up as best as I could in the USC, and then left them for around 36hours in the home made rust remover solution. This is how they turned up after some more cleaning with a scothbrite pad to remove the now loose rust:
The only other thing I managed to do was also remove the magnetic chuck... was much heavier than anticipated:
As you can see it has quite a bit of surface rust and lots of magnetized metal particles - I believe best way to remove these would be with a vacuum but I haven't gotten around to doing so. There are also some deep cuts on the surface but hopefully those won't prove to be too problematic once I clean it up and give it a light grinding. I will try and clean it as best as I can but I anticipate a lot of elbow grease will be required since I cannot just dunk it in rust remover and risk it leaking inside and potentially damaging it.
First shop I went to didn't have the correct fittings so after talking a bit with my friend we decided that in order to save some time from going to multiple shops and not managing to get new hoses made, it would be easier to 'extract' the fittings from the current hoses and have the shop crimp them on the new hoses:
Once I had gotten the first one out, the rest were relatively easy
New hoses after crimping:
I also managed to get new bearings for both the main spindle motor and powerfeed motor, so those got assembled as well:
Once the motors were sorted, I turned my attention to the spindle pulley. This had a round slotted nut (not sure what the correct term for it is) which was going to be problematic to remove without a proper tool. I could potentially have used a hammer and metal punch to remove it but I didn't want to damage the bearings:
After scrummaging in my scrap pile I found a chopped off bolt and some scrap flat bar which I milled it a bit to make it thinner and made a slot in it to fit over the nut. I then proceeded to weld them together - not the prettiest job but not bad for a few minutes I guess (and it worked pretty well):
Once I had both pulleys off, I tried cleaning them on the lathe but there was too much gunk and rust that the scotchbrite got immediately gunked up. So I first cleaned them up as best as I could in the USC, and then left them for around 36hours in the home made rust remover solution. This is how they turned up after some more cleaning with a scothbrite pad to remove the now loose rust:
The only other thing I managed to do was also remove the magnetic chuck... was much heavier than anticipated:
As you can see it has quite a bit of surface rust and lots of magnetized metal particles - I believe best way to remove these would be with a vacuum but I haven't gotten around to doing so. There are also some deep cuts on the surface but hopefully those won't prove to be too problematic once I clean it up and give it a light grinding. I will try and clean it as best as I can but I anticipate a lot of elbow grease will be required since I cannot just dunk it in rust remover and risk it leaking inside and potentially damaging it.
Thanks hehe really happy with how the pulleys turned out tbh.
And regarding your hoses, yeah if they're not leaking I wouldn't worry too much. Are they still relatively flexible? Mine were rock solid :/
Smouser
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Thanks hehe really happy with how the pulleys turned out tbh.
And regarding your hoses, yeah if they're not leaking I wouldn't worry too much. Are they still relatively flexible? Mine were rock solid :/
Flexible enough so I could get them back in where they were supposed to go
