I took delivery of a new Warco BH600 last week. Finally got the chanc
to play with it today. When I plugged in, very little happened. There' a green ON light on the front, which is indeed glowing green. But th motor is not turning. I have the change-wheel cover on and th chuck-guard down, both of which control on/off microswitches believe.
I looked inside the electrics box at the headstock end. There seems t be an "overload" relay in there. It has two small buttons, each about
1/4" square. There's a red one marked STOP and a blue one marked RESET Both are currently in the "out" position. I've pushed both of them, bu neither latches and nothing exciting happens.
Any BH600 owners out there who can tell me what I'm doing wrong??? O check their electrics box to see if the red/blue buttons ought to be i a different position.
Hi, just looked at my BH600 but can't find the overload relay you describe so they might be slightly different. With mine, all doors shut and guard down, emergency off button up the green light comes on. Nothing happens when you push the green button unless you have the saddle on/off lever in the right position. If, like I am always doing, you have knocked the lever up or down the motor won't start, you will need to return it to the central off position and then switch on the motor by moving the lever up or down for forward/reverse. If you have the green light on then all of the guard/door microswitches are made and moving the lever on the saddle should start things happening.
Saddle on/off lever - that's the one with the red plastic knob on th
end, three-position? I tried moving that to all positions, n difference.
I did notice just now that if I lift the chuck guard and open th change-wheel door the green light stays on. Should it go off?
If you could send email to shaw snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com (remove spac between shaw and brendan) I'll respond witha picture of the electric showing what I take to be the overload relay. How old is your BH600?
Been out and looked at my lathe, it has the red and blue buttons that you described and both are in the out position. when the red button is pushed the right hand relay on the top row of 3 relays clicks out, which also happens if any of the micro switches you mention are not closed. Cant offer any other suggestions if the gear cover, top belt and pulley cover and chuck guard are all fully closed and the emergency stop button is twisted to ensure it is not pressed in. Hope this helps Paul.
On mine the pully cover microswitch is operated by a black lever (bar) on the left hand side that just goes up to contact the cover. You can hold the cover open and minimal movement of the lever makes/breaks the switch. It's just above the backgear engagement lever.
These contactors (on mine anyway) are not very quiet so you will certainly hear if the contactor is making when you have power applied and operate the microswitches.
Thanks, that's the clue I needed. I wondered what the black lever wa for. When I moved it up just a fraction of an inch all was well! Don' you hate safety features :)
At least the thing is spinning, now "all" I have to do is get it ont its stand ...
Well done glad you have got it working. If you will excuse the pun - putting it on the stand isn't something to be taken lightly. My son and I did mine with one of those 1000Kg engine hoists which made it very easy. However if you use a more basic method be careful as it is very heavy and not well balanced, I think I read somewhere on someone jacking it up gradually. I thought that my fingers and toes were well worth the =A320 spent on hiring one and I found the thing so useful I went and bought a cheap one from Machine Mart. It works very well but takes alot of room in the garage even when it is folded.
Anyway, welcome to the world of lathe owners, I'm sure you will find it (at various times) fun, absorbing, frustrating, rewarding (when something works), enjoyable and expensive. Oh yes did I mention expensive! Good luck.
Yes you have to be careful when lifting on to the stand, I bought a engine hoist when I got mine but still had a heart stopping moment when one of the slings started slipping. A year later I had to go through it again when we moved house but this time I made a lifting fixture which clamps to the bed and made it a whole lot safer, if you live anywhere near Derby you are welcome to borrow it. Also remove as many bits as you can such as chuck, tailstock motor etc. to reduce the weight. As to your original enquiry the instruction book is very poor and gives no clues as to which guards have microswitches on them and I have read of people who buy a lathe of this type and cant get it to go only to find that the chuck guard is up. On my lathe I have started to get some vibration which seems to be at motor speed rather than spindle speed has anyone else experienced this? when I get round to it I must take the motor belt off and see if its the motor or something else, if anyone else has any ideas whilst on the subject let me know. Thanks Paul.
anotherid wrote:
Brendan
Well done glad you have got it working. If you will excuse the pun - putting it on the stand isn't something to be taken lightly. My son and I did mine with one of those 1000Kg engine hoists which made it very easy. However if you use a more basic method be careful as it is very heavy and not well balanced, I think I read somewhere on someone jacking it up gradually. I thought that my fingers and toes were well worth the £20 spent on hiring one and I found the thing so useful I went and bought a cheap one from Machine Mart. It works very well but takes alot of room in the garage even when it is folded.
Anyway, welcome to the world of lathe owners, I'm sure you will find it (at various times) fun, absorbing, frustrating, rewarding (when something works), enjoyable and expensive. Oh yes did I mention expensive! Good luck.
Paul, I would certainly agree that the instruction book leaves a bit (lot) to be desired, they all seem the same though and I suppose it is what we get for demanding the value for money that the machine offers. Perhaps we should think about a series of "Haynes manuals" for lathes but I don't suppose that the market would be that large. I bought "the book" for my Myford as I thought the handbook was basic but to be honest I wasn't impressed with that either, I'm glad I didn't pay the E-bay price for it (twice what Myford sell it for??) Have to see if John Stevenson is awake today he is very good at compiling these sort of useful information CDs.
I'm pleased (for me) to say that I haven't experienced this on my BH600 (yet) but have suffered from vibration on my 918 and my S7. The vibration on the 918 was high frequency and developed overnight, it was sufficient to make a complete dogs dinner of the finish and was still obvious with the motor belt off. After replacing the motor bearings and much messing around I took it to work and they found that it had "thrown" something or other inside (sorry can't remember what they called it). Anyway I needed to replace the motor and all was then well, hurt though to replace a running motor.
With the S7 it was not so easy to identify but was cheaper to cure. As I worked through the type of checks you have mentioned I found lots of little faults but didn't cure it. I found that the motor pulley had come slightly loose on the shaft, the anti-vibration mountings on the motor were shot and I had wear in the intermediate layshaft bearings. Problem was that fixing all that didn't cure the problem. Then someone told me that vee belts if left in one position for a considerable time can develop a "set" which will produce vibration, apparently this is more likely with fairly new belts. I changed the belt for one of the link type as I didn't want to dismantle the spindle and the problem was completely cured. Later on when I had time I replaced the link with a new belt from Myford (sucker for original equipment me!!) and the vibration returned partly. It's now been running for the last two years on the link belt with no problem at all.
Paul, not sure if this helps at all but I think it's a case of working through methodically until you find the source. I must say that if it were to happen on mine and prove to be an internal motor problem I would be very tempted to go the three phase inverter route rather than a straight replacement.
I'm down in Hampshire ... could you dupply details of what you made? might be able to get a friend to make it up for me.
Keith - I'd already decided that I'd hire a hoist! What I'm not quit sure about is whether I'll be able to come in broadside to the stand o whether I'll have to come in "longitudinally" from the narrow end of th stand. If the latter I'll have to tear other stuff out and move a bench which will be a nusiance, though not undoable. It's all a question o whether the hoist's legs will fit between the two cabinets that make u the stand supports. Did you use the supplied stand? Which way did yo have to approach it.
(at various times) fun, absorbing, frustrating, rewarding (when something works), enjoyable and expensive. Oh yes did I mention expensive!
I'd already latched on to the latter! Especially as I bought a mill too :)
Brendan, yes I did use the supplied stand and no the legs of either of the two I have used wouldn't fit between. It depends where you sling it really, I chose to sling from the bed crossbrace which makes it fairly easy to balance but means that you have to position it "longitudinally" which for me was the easiest way with regards clearance. However if you sling it from the headstock end and support manually at the tailstock end you might be able to come in broadside. The problem there is that the legs project a fair way beyond the lifting eye even with the jib fully extended so you need to check you have sufficient clearance behind the position the lathe will go. It also means lifting on the fully extended jib position which on the ones I used meant the weight was over the recommended, the cheap Machine Mart one handled this with ease, the larger one I hired didn't, the relief valve released and the thing came down slowly. I didn't take anything off and lifted it complete but I can see that by removing bits as Paul suggests there may be better ways to sling it. We roughly positioned the stands and tray and lifted the lathe on to them, then moving the hoist about we could get a position with a leg either side of the headstock stand where we could take the weight and finally position everything. It worked and was safe but it was a fiddle, I'm sure when you have all the bits there and a space prepared you will find a way to put it in. Once you have lifted it up onto the stand then you can move the hoist to get the best angle for the legs take the weight of the lathe and slide it and the stand a few inches at a time to get into just the right position.
You really have got the bug, as Peter has said before there is no cure, it's lots of fun and an empty wallet from now on. What mill did you get? let us know how you get on with that as well. Which lathe and which mill to buy must be the two most often asked questions so up to date experience is always helpful to someone.
I have posted a couple of pictures of the lifer that I made at -
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is quite simple, I made it from a piece of heavy duty channel with one leg cut off to make an unequal angle, some about 20mm studding and a piece of thick plate. Where the angle sits on the bed I used 2 off cuts of aluminium so I didn't rest on the ground section.
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