Well, I spun the spindle under power today. I was planning to use an inverter from Spedestar (PC1-50) that is designed to provide a full 3.7Kw (5hp) off of single phase, but when I had some spare cash to buy it Drives Warehouse was out of stock on them. Aurgh! I had absolutely no confidence in that Mitsubishi VFD that was in the cabinet, but it does have instructions for hooking it to single phase. I figured I'ld just run it from its own control panel to start. I wired power to it, hooked up the ground and the braking resistor (which I had previously removed when I stripping the machine in preparation for the retrofit.

Then after sitting there for a while preparing myself mentally for smoke and flames I threw the blade. The inverter had a default setting of 40 hz on the display so I pushed FWD.

The spindle just started right up. In reverse. I half expected that. Nothing on the motor or rest of the machine is labeled. I ran the motor from 3hz to 100hz on the first test run and it seemed fine. something is kind of whiney under 20hz, but it runs smoothly enough otherwise.

Figured I'ld post an update while it powers down so I can swap a couple motor leads and get it running in the right direction.

I know I could just hook the forward control pin to reverse and the reverse control pin to forward when I wire it into the breakout board, but I will hook it up right at the inverter incase I have to run the spindle in manual mode on the future. (Now I need to order some 5V relays. The controller wants dry contacts for the start inputs.)