oh i love the gear head idea, i get 6 speeds to choose from where i get max torque from the motor that will be running at it's normal 1420 rpm's, so getting max motor cooling too.
And the VFD allows me to fine tune those speeds if needed… watching out for the motor heating up and getting less cooling from the shaft driven fan when i lower the speed of course.
My mini lathe has the DC variable drive and 2 gears, i always seem to run that in low gear at below half speed, the motor gets fairly toasty after a while… must get round to fitting a computer style fan to the end of that motor.
I guess as this is the first mill i've owned and only having heard the bridgeport run at hackspace, i find it quiet, the cutters make the most noise.
I too find the number of cables that come and go from that yellow button box a pain, why they didnt route the power into the VFD box, then the motor power wires straight to the motor from the VFD box i don't know, why loop them into the button box then straight back out again,
Getting to the column locks i have to snake my hands through all the wire hoses.
So i am totally re-doing that, the yellow button box is 95% empty space, when it was single phase motor it would have had 2 x 4 pole contactors and a timer module in there to handle the reversing of a single phase motor when in tapping mode,
I'm putting my VFD in a much larger electrical box on the wall, mains will go into the bottom of it, through a couple of mcb's, to a 12 volt psu for the ring light and control circuits, a contactor that will switch power to the VFD, plus an outlet for the DRO to plug into, and later on a 24 volt psu for axis motors.
Then a multi core cable will come out and go to my new button box, which will be all low voltage inside, the new button box will be mounted under the front of the swarf tray (it hangs off my bench by a couple of inches.. just the swarf tray, the mill is firmly on the bench)
Then the cable from the VFD to the motor will come out the top of the electrics box, loop above the mill and go back down to the motor, the only other cable i'll need from the mill will be the one for the tapping function microswitches, and the power to my ring light that's mounted around the spindle,
i'll also have a switched outlet on the electrics box for my DRO (still in the post) and my DRO head will mount roughly where the yellow button box is on the mill now, only it'll not travel up n down with the head like the button box does now, i really don't like reaching above my head to turn the mill on and off when the heads wound all the way to the top of the column.