Jet 1642 lathe

I have an opportunity to purchase a Jet 1642 lathe that has a bad VFD on it. The VFD is a Delta VFD007S11A, which is no longer made. Jet wants $600 for a new VFD, but I can buy a new Delta VFD007EL11A for under $200. The capacities and other specs are pretty much the same, and I can wire the new VFD by cross referencing the old VFD wiring schematic to the new one.

The problem I'm facing is the parameter settings for the new one, as I can't power the old one on to retrieve the parameters. Has anyone done something like this before? Does anyone know where i can find the parameter list for the drive?

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

I can help with that. Just replaced one on a Club lathe a couple months ago.
Sending message.

 

if the lathe runs with the new VFD then there are only a couple of parameters you need to play with. The ramp up speed and the electronic braking. They probably aren't called that in the manual so it takes some guess work to figure out. I've done a couple over the years and managed to struggle through getting them to work. Tom probably has a better handle on this.

 

Mission Accomplished!

There's a little over a dozen parameters that differ from the defaults. Things such as Min/Max on voltage & frequency, Frequency & Voltage mid-point, Accel/Decel time, Command source, Line Start Lockout, Over-voltage stall prevention, and motor rated current. Password protection is also enabled from Jet. No need to do this unless you are worried about someone messing with the programming.

 

I had a similar problem with my 1642, after a power surge blew out the VFD on mine. I ended up taking it to a guy who services Jet machinery, in eastern Pa. IIRC, it cost me nearly $1K, but since I'm basically an idiot with electronics, I was willing to pay to get it done.
I now unplug my lathe when its not being used.

 

Dan, if you haven't bought the new VFD yet, you might consider alternative brands. You don't have to stick to Delta and other brands might offer more value.

 

I looked online at several sources, including eBay, Amazon, and a ton of retailers. I was amazed at the wildly different prices for the same products! One retailer would sell a VFD for $150, and another would sell the same drive for $450. That's just nuts! The drive I needed was $600 from Jet, and I found replacements from about $250 to $800 on the web from these various vendors.

I'm a certified industrial electrician, with 35 years of experience. I can install VFDs, PLCs, and most anything electrical or electronic. The trick with any of these things is, 1) the quality of the device, and 2) The software/firmware that makes it do whatever it's supposed to do. In this case, I could find a comparable drive, made by the same manufacturer, that follows the same control logic and programming process. I just didn't have the ability to pull the register settings off of the old drive because it was dead.
Tom was able to send me the register map, so it rapidly became a no-brainer to replace with the updated drive from the original manufacturer.

Knowing who sells what in the electronics industry is a real money saver sometimes. I was able to locate the Delta VFD direct replacement at one of the supply houses for less than $225, plus taxes and shipping. I went ahead and ordered it, and it has already shipped to my home. I'll have the lathe back up and running soon!

Thanks for all the helpful information and comments!

 

talk to the people at https://dealerselectric.com/ They have been extremely helpful to me and my friends. We just installed one on a friends lathe and after everything was wired according to the manual it did not work properly. They worked with my friend who was also an electrician and actually had to contact the contractor themselves. Turned out the manual was incorrect. So they walked my friend through the changes and it now works. Not many dealers will put out that much effort.

 

A neighbor has a business that sells VFD's. He will not sell to an individual for personal use because it most often requires too much "hand holding" or after sale support.

 

The main problem with most VFD's is the large number of parameters available and the complexity of the typical manual that is supplied with most of the VFD's these days.
The industrial quality VFD's we install at the Bio-Refinery I work at have a manual over a thousand pages long and 100's of parameters to choose from. Most VFD applications
require programming 4 or 5 parameters to operate the machine for its intended purpose. The manufacturers are coming up with new series VFD's every other year on average,
this makes it difficult to keep up with the changes between new and old models and every manufacturer uses different software and hardware designs.

 

If it had been my lathe instead of our Club's then I would have looked for a cheaper or updated VFD. But I didn't want to gamble with the Clubs money, particularly since I'd only been a member for a couple weeks. Even so it was less than half what they were going to spend buying from Jet.
Also, they have at least four 1642's and a few Powermatics that use the same VFD.

 

I've converted large motor controls from old fashioned reduced voltage contactor type starters to VFDs and soft starters in industrial applications up to 150HP 3 phase systems. As I said, I'm a certified industrial electrician. If the manual is correct, I can make it run correctly. I have a better than average knowledge of control wiring and application, including installing, programming and troubleshooting process control and robotic systems.

Having said that, I can completely understand why your neighbor won't sell to individuals. There are simply too many potential errors in installing and programming PLC, BFDs and soft starters. If one hasn't been trained to understand control systems, and isn't intimately familiar with schematics and electrical symbols, It would be easy to miswire a controller and destroy it.

I tend to buy from professional supply houses, as they have knowledgeable people in-house, and access to factory engineering if there is an issue. They also tend to have much better pricing than any retailer, as they buy in quantity from the manufacturer. It's not for everyone, but when you can speak the same language, it really helps. Most of the people I buy from, I've been dealing with for 20+ years, and some of them for over 35 years.

 

I completely agree with you, Mike. It's like any other microprocessor based system in that it is almost obsolete by the time you unpack it and install it.

The average Joe would have a very difficult time changing a 10 year old control system to one that is state of the art, even if it was as simple as removing the old and installing the new. As you say, programming languages change, register maps change, and the manuals aren't getting any easier to read and understand. The technology changes we've seen in the last 20 years, heck, even in the last 5 years, are huge! It hasn't been that long ago that an 8 bit processor with 8K of ram was state of the art. Now, 32 bit processors are almost passe'.