KEW- I have an old Rockwell lathe that works fine but the reeves drive is kind of clunky and the thing is really loud, its fat, slow and old. the vic is nimble, quick, and brand new! 😉 I have never turned on anything with pot adjustable variable speed and never on a machine that I could actually hear the wood instead of the vibration! it's awesome!! The VFD is almost infinitely adjustable and does a LOT of different things. I have never done anything with electricity before so that was a little scary but I found it fun to re-learn wiring diagrams, etc... program the thing to do what i wanted it to do, etc... I have to tally it up exactly but it seems I got it going for around 900 bucks which includes everything... bases, casters, remote controls, 1.0 HP Baldor, VFD, bed extension, etc.... Pretty good considering the vl100 with a motor is 750 or something, or was when CS still carried it, and did not have variable speed. I will post pics of the whole project soon. MY intention is to have the vl100 with bed extension for general use and spindles and the vl300 short bed for bowls. I will build the vl300 myself too to not only save cash but it allows you to really add tons of features not otherwise available to the stock lathe. For instance, I can add a braking resistor to the machine tomorrow with no trouble, or change the amt of torque generated at start up by pushing a cpl buttons. It was a really fun project!
