Is it possible to set up an apartment shop?

[MechMan183]

Larger electric motor, usually over about 1/2 hp, are better when run at the higher 220v supply. That reduces the starting current and motor heating. 220v is usually wired into housees, but is almost never wired to other than a kitchen circuit. For a bedroom shop stick with small machines and motors under 1/2hp.

Don't think I could go that small. The Grizzly 7" x 12" for example is a 3/4 hp motor.

 

[goldstar31]

Don't think I could go that small. The Grizzly 7" x 12" for example is a 3/4 hp motor.

Why not? I'm running my bigger lathe on 1/2 HP and my smaller one on 1/3rd.

My 'reserve' motor is 1/4HP 1440rpm and this ran a 'wartime' Pools Major which was everything that the present bargain basement lathes have- and lots more besides.

My tool and cutter grinders all run on 1/6th HP 2880rpm motors.

Might I therefore suggest that most workshop - and your proposed rather less than a workshop, needs a lot less so called horse power than you suppose?

I haven't quite worked out what my little Unimat clone is using but I can always give a hamster a bit of exercise if the motor blows:hDe:

Don't fall for this snakeoil stuff or Josef Goebbels propaganda. Salespeople don't run lathes, they have to spend all their days trying to find a crust to eat or someone to con.

Regards


Norman

 

[ShopShoe]

Unless you can consider rewiring, an apartment bedroom most likely will have only 115V outlets on a 15 or 20 amp. circuit that is also shared with other parts of the apartment. In some cases that shared stuff may also include the overhead lighting in some rooms. If you have a breaker box for your own apartment, you can look at the size of the circuit breakers and switch circuits off one-at-a-time to find what is on each circuit.

You can estimate the load on a circuit by adding up the individual loads of each item. It is not totally accurate, but you can roughly estimate that each 100 Watts on 115V is 1 amp. Motors may need additional current when starting up, so you also need to be under the total capacity of the circuit as well.

If you don't have your own box, or share it with someone else, you also have to keep your power consumption low enough to avoid tripping breakers, resulting in calls to maintenance people, thus resulting in more investigations into what you are doing in your apartment.

Most likely you will have to set up a "starter" workshop with smaller machines and begin experimenting and building.

We all would like to see you start and would love posts about what you are doing.

As one who was once in your shoes, I have to add that you should do something, just realize that you can't make the perfect plan at the beginning.

Good Luck

--
--ShopShoe

 

[goldstar31]

Overloading one phase on a supply network can cause all sorts of troubles. I went through all this professionally but 35 years of retirement tends to dull everything -apart from the regular receipt of the pension for doing it.

Norman

 

[bazmak]

This post started as asking the questions of small/quiet (sewing machine) sized
lathes and seems to have escalated to 3000ib lathes and 2 hp motors
Don't know how we all got there but for you its a no no
I would highly recommend the sieg Sc2/3 with 500w variable speed motor
Very quiet with belt drive and plugs in to a std outlet.Would suggest the
14 or 16" bed,can be moved about by 1 man. Will make almost all models
and will turn up to 6" dia steel.You can use it straight out of the box and the web
is filled with all the info you need and lots of tooling and mods to keep you happy Regards barry

 

[MechMan183]

Why not? I'm running my bigger lathe on 1/2 HP and my smaller one on 1/3rd.

My 'reserve' motor is 1/4HP 1440rpm and this ran a 'wartime' Pools Major which was everything that the present bargain basement lathes have- and lots more besides.

My tool and cutter grinders all run on 1/6th HP 2880rpm motors.

Might I therefore suggest that most workshop - and your proposed rather less than a workshop, needs a lot less so called horse power than you suppose?

I haven't quite worked out what my little Unimat clone is using but I can always give a hamster a bit of exercise if the motor blows:hDe:

Don't fall for this snakeoil stuff or Josef Goebbels propaganda. Salespeople don't run lathes, they have to spend all their days trying to find a crust to eat or someone to con.

Regards


Norman

The thing is that the small lathes all seem to have pretty powerful motors in comparison to what you describe, and I don't want a super small one.

 

[MechMan183]

Unless you can consider rewiring, an apartment bedroom most likely will have only 115V outlets on a 15 or 20 amp. circuit that is also shared with other parts of the apartment. In some cases that shared stuff may also include the overhead lighting in some rooms. If you have a breaker box for your own apartment, you can look at the size of the circuit breakers and switch circuits off one-at-a-time to find what is on each circuit.

You can estimate the load on a circuit by adding up the individual loads of each item. It is not totally accurate, but you can roughly estimate that each 100 Watts on 115V is 1 amp. Motors may need additional current when starting up, so you also need to be under the total capacity of the circuit as well.

If you don't have your own box, or share it with someone else, you also have to keep your power consumption low enough to avoid tripping breakers, resulting in calls to maintenance people, thus resulting in more investigations into what you are doing in your apartment.

Most likely you will have to set up a "starter" workshop with smaller machines and begin experimenting and building.

We all would like to see you start and would love posts about what you are doing.

As one who was once in your shoes, I have to add that you should do something, just realize that you can't make the perfect plan at the beginning.

Good Luck

--
--ShopShoe

Thank you for the advice, yes we do have our own breaker box though.

 

[MechMan183]

This post started as asking the questions of small/quiet (sewing machine) sized
lathes and seems to have escalated to 3000ib lathes and 2 hp motors
Don't know how we all got there but for you its a no no
I would highly recommend the sieg Sc2/3 with 500w variable speed motor
Very quiet with belt drive and plugs in to a std outlet.Would suggest the
14 or 16" bed,can be moved about by 1 man. Will make almost all models
and will turn up to 6" dia steel.You can use it straight out of the box and the web
is filled with all the info you need and lots of tooling and mods to keep you happy Regards barry

Well no, I haven't gone up to 3,000 lb lathes, just 500 lbs A symptom of just wanting to biggest lathe I can get is the thing. You look at one lathe, then you look at one slightly bigger, and figure, "I could fit that," then rinse and repeat, and you're up to 500 lbs.

The ones that most interest me are the MicroMark 7" x 16" and the LittleMachineShop 7" x 16" one, the LittleMachineShop 8.5" x 20", and the Grizzly 10" x 22" but that might be too large for me.

 

[goldstar31]

I can understand the views expressed from all sides but might I go back to the noise/loading problem in an apartment?
You are setting off on a course in which you are going to be both tearing and torturing metal but in doing so, you might well be tearing apart and torturing any goodwill from neighbours.

I live in a quite large detached bungalow in what is in England a large plot with its own trees and whatever and am flanked by equally detached houses etc in their own grounds. Whilst I am perfectly capable of buying ANY machine tool, I must consider the social and moral responsibilities of where I live .

I might, and my neighbours have activities generating 90db( I have a rather large sit on lawn mower, they have normal, noisy children and trampolines and so on- and we all have barbecues and social 'noise' but there is a limit which must not be exceeded.

It is fair to mention the matter but the decision is yours and yours alone.

regards

Norman

 

[bazmak]

The micro mark 7x16 is the one I went for.Mainly for the camloc tailstock and metal changegears not plastic.It was an ideal lathe,did everything I asked until
the motor/board blew.I then upgraded to the Sc4 8x20
I would not recommend anything bigger than 7x16 for your situation
Keep us posted when you decide. Regards barry

 

[Wizard69]

Okay, from what I see, the average electrical outlet in the U.S. is 110-120 volts. Most of the lathes say that is what the motor is, however the 10K says: 110V/220V, single-phase, 60 Hz. Don't know what the 220V part means, I assume it must be okay though if yours runs from a standard outlet.

A 110/220 motor is a single phase motor designed to be switchable based on the power being supplied to it. Usually this means reconfiguring the wiring or jumpers at the motors junction box. For fractional horsepower motors the voltage you run the motor at has no bearing on performance.

You can't however assume correct wiring of these motors, it is always a good idea to double check that a motor is wired for the voltage you will be using before powering up.

 

[Wizard69]

Don't think I could go that small. The Grizzly 7" x 12" for example is a 3/4 hp motor.

A 3/4 hp motor will run fine in 110 VAC if it is designed for it. Generally the big problem with larger motors on 110 VAC circuits is voltage drop. If the voltage drop is so significant that you enter brown out conditions then you will have problems with the motor.

Generally you can expect to pull about 1400 watts of power from a 15 amp 115 VAC socket reliably. (For those doing the math that includes derating breaker current to 80%). That is almost two horse power. Starting the motor may be an issue though as the locked rotor currents are extremely high for a few cycles thus you can trip fast breakers at startup.

 

[Wizard69]

Why not? I'm running my bigger lathe on 1/2 HP and my smaller one on 1/3rd.

In the past a lot of lathes came with similarly sized motors. You don't need a lot of Horse Power for most model engineering metal removal rates. It is good that you point this out because I suspect that many don't understand power requirements in machining.

Now I'm not going to say the power is never useful, but power does imply a lathe that can handle it.

My 'reserve' motor is 1/4HP 1440rpm and this ran a 'wartime' Pools Major which was everything that the present bargain basement lathes have- and lots more besides.

My tool and cutter grinders all run on 1/6th HP 2880rpm motors.

Might I therefore suggest that most workshop - and your proposed rather less than a workshop, needs a lot less so called horse power than you suppose?

This I agree with 100%. A workshop in the end is composed of several machines with one or more grinders considered mandatory. Trying to stuff all of this equipment into a tight space is going to be a challenge all on its own. My preferences generally lean towards larger lathes but in this case the original poster really needs to fit the tools to the workspace.

I haven't quite worked out what my little Unimat clone is using but I can always give a hamster a bit of exercise if the motor blows:hDe:

Don't fall for this snakeoil stuff or Josef Goebbels propaganda. Salespeople don't run lathes, they have to spend all their days trying to find a crust to eat or someone to con.

Regards


Norman

 

[Wizard69]

The thing is that the small lathes all seem to have pretty powerful motors in comparison to what you describe, and I don't want a super small one.

In some cases you need to take advertised motor horsepower ratings on Chinese machine tools with a grain of salt. While some of the vendors hawking higher end machines do have better motors don't assume they are all rated according to NEMA standards.

The other thing to consider is that some of the more expensive machines include variable speed motors. These are great but they are often rated higher to make sure the motor maintains power at lower speeds. On the other hand some of the cheap variable speed drives are hooked up to nothing more than universal motors of poor reputation. Look carefully at what you are actually getting in a lathe package.

 

[Wizard69]

Well no, I haven't gone up to 3,000 lb lathes, just 500 lbs A symptom of just wanting to biggest lathe I can get is the thing. You look at one lathe, then you look at one slightly bigger, and figure, "I could fit that," then rinse and repeat, and you're up to 500 lbs.

I understand this myself. However you are currently extremely limited in space that puts real restrictions on what you can do. Plus you seem to have not considered other required machinery such as a tool grinder which is almost an immediate requirement.

In my opinion a tool grinder is a requirement even if you intend to use insert tooling most of the time. The fact is learning to use HSS tool blanks, to grind them to suit the job at hand, is just a mandatory skill.

The ones that most interest me are the MicroMark 7" x 16" and the LittleMachineShop 7" x 16" one, the LittleMachineShop 8.5" x 20", and the Grizzly 10" x 22" but that might be too large for me.

That 10x22 is really nice but it by its very nature will take up a lot more area on your bench than the 7x16's will.

 

[MechMan183]

The micro mark 7x16 is the one I went for.Mainly for the camloc tailstock and metal changegears not plastic.It was an ideal lathe,did everything I asked until
the motor/board blew.I then upgraded to the Sc4 8x20
I would not recommend anything bigger than 7x16 for your situation
Keep us posted when you decide. Regards barry

Do the 7x16's have a reputation for blowing the motors/boards? I ask because a guy on Youtube who has a 7x16 said the same thing, that eventually his motor/board blew. He had the Micro Mark 7x16.

 

[MechMan183]

I understand this myself. However you are currently extremely limited in space that puts real restrictions on what you can do. Plus you seem to have not considered other required machinery such as a tool grinder which is almost an immediate requirement.

In my opinion a tool grinder is a requirement even if you intend to use insert tooling most of the time. The fact is learning to use HSS tool blanks, to grind them to suit the job at hand, is just a mandatory skill.

Are tool grinders very noisy, or is that a matter of size, like say a tool grinder for a Sherline would be a lot less noisy than one for a larger lathe? Also thank you for all the information, especially on the electric motors, that is a confusing subject. I actually just got a book on electric motors, hopefully that will help clear more up.

 

[Tin Falcon]

Tool grinding will be a bit noisey. You really do not need more than a 6" grinder. what really counts is the stones I use norton white wheels . the blue wheels are supposed to be better cut faster cooler and last longer and I expect they do but a set of wheels will set you back about $90 the white wheels are about half that. A powered whetstone will run quite and would be great for final grinding and touch up but too slow to form a cutting tool from a square blank. I am not an apartment dweller but I do live in a tight neighborhood . Houses only 20 -30 feet apart. I have never had a neighbor complain about noise. But I do not run power saws or grinders at 10 pm either.
tin

 

[Wizard69]

Are tool grinders very noisy, or is that a matter of size, like say a tool grinder for a Sherline would be a lot less noisy than one for a larger lathe? Also thank you for all the information, especially on the electric motors, that is a confusing subject. I actually just got a book on electric motors, hopefully that will help clear more up.

They can be somewhat noisy but a lot of the noise associated with grinding, on a bench grinder, comes from unbalanced wheels. Learning to balance the wheels greatly reduces one type of noise coming from the grinder. A quality grinder doing nothing should be fairly quite.

The noise coming from grinding is another thing and highly variable depending upon what you are doing. There is no way to really moderate it. Frankly the noise shouldn't be worst than a dishwasher running. You will most likely want get a small bench grinder first instead of a dedicated tool grinder. A 1/3 hp bench grinder would be fine for a shop this size.

 

[ShopShoe]

I think the noise of actual grinding is loud enough to annoy some people. If it were me, I would set my own limitations on grinding to times of day when it might be the least disruptive. If the building is mostly people who work during the day and come home to rest and enjoy their own quiet times, I would maybe limit my grinding to the time between when people are coming home and when you think they might be starting their evening meals. If there are young children the parents are trying to calm down, I might wait for the weekend. If I found out my neighbors were day sleepers, I would also restrict my time to when they are not home.

As far as running a small lathe and mill, I would probably stop around 8 or 9 PM on a weeknight, maybe 10:00 on Saturday. I would spend any "shop" time later doing things that are less noisy, such as filing and hand sanding and cleanup. I would also avoid extra noise, such as TV or music in the shop, during late hours.

All of this assumes a good general level of sound insulation in your building. Cheaply built apartments with poor insulation would call for you to be extra quiet. I would think that if you can sometimes hear your neighbors talking through the walls, they would probably hear your machines any time you were working.

Also, your machines need to be mounted so as not to transmit noise through the structure of the building. You might put isolation pads between your machines and the bench they are on and between the bench legs and the floor. this also means that probably nothing should be directly mounted to a wall. My mother lives in a duplex in a retirement community and the neighbor has a woodshop. Everything is very well insulated and you cannot hear his machines.
For a while there would be some knocking and tapping noises on the wall. It urned out he had tools and small shelves on the wall and transmission through the structure let noise from his use of those through. When I was in an apartment years ago, I worked on an old wooden office desk and tried to isolate things as much as possible. Unfortunately, some noise still did transmit through and I voluntarily restricted my activities to early weeknight times and only mid-day on Saturday.

Hope this helps you,

--ShopShoe