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Warco 180M DOA

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John Rudd:
Ok, I shall elaborate a little more.....

The FWD/OFF/REV switch is just that....but it is also interlocked with circuitry on the speed control board IF it is of the Sieg speed control board....and prevents the machine starting if not in the correct position after the Fault light or a power failure occurs.

I dont know which boards the Warco machines use, I suspect they use either KB Controls or a Chineses knock-off.....In which the F-O-R switch reduces the speed of the machine when in Rev mode.

Both types of boards, Sieg or KB, have circuitry that controls the ramp speed of the motor, I doubt the tech dept are aware of the functionality of the electronics in detail...However the fact that  they claim that the speed pot needs to be reduced to Zero prior startup is part of their warranty terms...misuse of the machine? ( btw, the Sieg and KB boards use the same elctronic circuitry...)

In my opinion you should not have to spin the chuck by hand to get rhe machine to run, this is a dangerous practise that could result in personal injury...but its your choice...

Hope you have fun with your lathe..

lesterhawksby:
OK...

I have a WM180, about 9 or 10 years old now so may not be identical.

Mine never required giving the chuck a push to start it, and I think that is very clearly a fault, and a potentially unsafe one. I'm very unimpressed with Warco if they told you that's normal. I've seen a few other machines with the same kind of (DC brushed) drive system and none of them needed that either. The speed sensor is unconnected to the motor drive so it probably isn't that (some DC brushless drives use sensor info as part of the drive but these don't). These machines are not by Sieg and their systems are not identical so far as I know, but they are really pretty similar; mine doesn't have the "fault light" described by John Rudd, I think that's a Sieg thing. The green "on" button should be the only way to turn it on and it shouldn't stay down unless the interlocks and direction switch are in good-to-go positions. The push-start problem may never recur if it is just some "first startup after shipping" weirdness, in which case the machine may well be fine, but if it comes back I don't think you should have to put up with it.

I don't think of the forward/off/reverse switch as a form of on/off, it's just a mode setting, stays in forward, if I need reverse then I switch it back after I'm done. If you switch it while the machine is running, the no-volt release under the green start button is tripped and you have to use that green button to get it going again anyway. I got into the habit of not stopping it that way and I don't think this is an operating inconvenience in practice, whereas the cover over the ordinary red/green start/stop buttons is a nuisance in my view. I imagine the aim of that cover is to prevent an unsafe scenario of "I meant to press stop but I hit the start button instead" but it also adds the unsafe scenario of "I meant to press stop but that stupid cover is in the way", so I reckon it's zero-sum in safety terms - perhaps it provides token conformity to some poorly-thought-through rule. My normal procedure (perhaps unwise, but it works for me) is to leave that cover open and use the green and red buttons under it for start and normal/planned stop, saving the separate emergency-stop button for a "real emergency" (very, very rare). That feels low-hassle to me as it's one press each time and no fiddling, but then again I'm used to it.

I never heard any instruction that the speed has to be right down to start. Turning the speed down on every stop/start would be a right pain on lots of work and I don't think it would be an acceptable limitation, I certainly never do. I have heard that some people have had problems attributed to going straight from "on" to "high" but that hasn't happened to me - maybe I'm doing it wrong and am lucky? I'm not sure if it's a real problem or not, but I don't think I leave it on really high. I do find it a helpful technique to start low and dial the speed up if working with something imperfectly balanced, or when testing what cut I can get away with, as a way of accommodating the small size and relatively low power of the machine - just slightly different thinking compared to what you do on bigger machines.

I must admit I did eventually harm my WM180 motor by driving it too hard too long on a bad cut in large-diameter bad material, got it too hot. It still runs, but less well. Time to retire it. After 9 years and having got away with a couple of similar jobs before when I did a better job of judging when to back off, I can't blame the machine - the fault's all mine. Anyway, I think this is a little evidence that the control board can't be as feeble as some people say, since it coped ok.

Good luck and I hope this turns out to just be teething trouble on an otherwise good machine!

awemawson:
Surely the controller is meant to ramp up to speed at a pre-determined rate that is safe for the electronics and the mechanics  wherever the pot is set to at start up :scratch:

John Rudd:
Andrew,
On the Sieg boards there is no adjustment for the acceleration ramp, however the KB Controls boards do. They are factory adjusted to give an optimum acceleration time.

Given that, it should not make any difference to where the speed pot is set, ergo, you could stop the machine with the Stop button, then restart with the 'Go' green button. I dont think that Warco understand this hence their instruction is that the speed pot should be reduced to zero on stopping, and ensuring it is at zero on starting....I guess they have found that many users dont do this and it has resulted in the demise of the speed control board hence they state this method of stop/starting to reduce the number of warranty claims

awemawson:
Good reason not to buy one then. Sounds like a rubbish design if it doesn't preserve it's own life !

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