Reply To: Warco VMC Vario

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

Captain Biggles

Back around year 2000(ish) I bought a one off square column mill fitted with a VFD controlled motor and two speed belt drive from Chester. Pretty much equivalent to a Super Major Vario albeit with a smaller table and none of the bells'n whistles like power feed, DRO et al.

Went round and round many laps trying to decide whether a 626 / VMC or square column bench mount mill gave best bang for buck. In the end the VFD drive swung it. Objectively the bench mount machine was easier to finagle into a pre-filled workshop but there are visibility issues with the big square head and the screw from the bottom depth stop is Beezlebubs own. Works but not well enough to be relied on. Being a slim "sub-Bridgeport" style the 626 / VMC head gives much better visibility. Why none of the import suppliers offer a similarly slim head as the varispeed option on a square column bench mill I don't know. The square head now being mostly empty box rather than full of gears. Think small bed mill.

When it comes to practical work capabilities I'd reckon the Super Major Vario and VMC Vario would be just about impossible to separate over the general run of jobs. Cherry picking specific examples where one is better that the other is probably possible but outside of, maybe arcane, specifics you'll never noctice once you have got into the swing of how best to exploit the one you bought. As a happy Bridgport driver these days I still don't know wheter I plumped for the right one back then!

One thing that applies to both though.

From my experience choosing to cover the whole speed range on the VFD is a considerable error. Mine 2 belt speed device covered 125 to 1,400 rpm on low speed belts and 250 to 2,800 rpm on high. Which generally worked very well inded although I feel that something like 90 to 1,000 on low speed might have been a little better when swinging flycutters and the like. But less overlap might well have led to more belt speed changes mid job. My recollection is that the overlap in speed ranges was so large thatI never needed to do mid job belt changes so not an issue for me. Jobs were either low speed or high speed ones and the belts set appropriately before hand. In practice left where they were unless I had to change.

I am sure that trying to cover 100 to 2500 or thereabouts in a single VFD speed range is ambitious and will sacrifice some performance. In practice it may well work well enough but I can't see anyone who has used a two range version wanting to switch back to a single range.

Clive