Hi all,

After moving I am finally getting my woodshop reassembled. The new
space is in a pole barn at the new place. The pole barn has
negligible power but I want to rearrange the power feed anyway. New
feed will have the main breaker in the pole building and from there I
will distribute to house etc. The electric company has said they would
set a new transformer and my cost for that would be reasonable
(basically running wire from pole underground to transformer and it's
short run). So far so good. Across the road is 3 phase. I am
investigating the cost to get 3 phase added into the move. So here's
my question to the wreck: 120/208Y or 120/240 with a wild leg?
Power company will provide either.

I have a couple of older pieces (example: a WWII vintage Buffalo
drill press) that have been retrofitted with single phase motors. Am
always looking to pick up old machines cheap. I still have the
original motors and would like to put them back (freeing up the retro-
fit motors for other uses). The original drill press motor says 240V,
as it originally ran in a 240/415Y facility. I'm willing to lower my
expectations for motor power if I go with 208Y, but I do worry about
starting torque and premature motor death. Any real experience out
there on this?

Thanks!

hex
-30-