'It lives, Igor. It lives,'
I took the desperation route and set up the machine using just one contactor and no overloads.
But now I know it works (including the speed control) I can make everything neat and tidy. At the moment the pilot motor is held down to a table with G clamps and the lathe control panel is laying on a wooden chair with all it's innards exposed, Nothing has any covers on. (( need to get at the wiring to measure things). All rather dangerous

. Re connecting the other contactor will give me a lathe that actually runs in reverse as well as forward.
I do believe my original problem was down to a disconnection in the contactor relay circuitry. Things quickly start to get complicated when the interlock switches are included.
But the pilot motor / capacitor idea works well. with the lathe running I am getting around 406 Volt average. A small tweak on the capacitance will probably improve that.
As the lathe is the biggest load I am likely to put on the system (and that draws less than 2 AMP), I'm quite satisfied. The only fly in the ointment is that as the transformer is fed from a 16 Amp trip in the house, sometimes the trip drops out on starting the pilot. No big deal as everything is fine once the pilot motor is running. Maybe an additional few MFDs just for starting will improve things.
I'll include some proper reading next time.
Dave
