Brian Lawson fired this volley in
:

I've mentioned here before that a lathe I have works that way. The
only thing 3 phase is the spindle motor, and the other stuff is single
phase but uses the different three-phase legs, sort of balanced out .

All you need to be sure of is that the three phases combined don't draw
more current than the single-phase leg will have to deliver.

In my case the _total_ draw is under 20 amps at 240VAC, so it's not much
of a worry.

The VFD is from Motortronics. The ME203 model, good for 3hp. My spindle
is 2HP.

I'm not trying to speed-control with the VFD. That's done by variable-
pitch sheaves in the headstock. All I had to do was build a relay board
that would accept the same voltage as the motor contactors (24VDC), that
would isolate the VFD from the drive enables. Then I disconnected the
motor leads from the existing contactors, and routed them to the VFD.

LLoyd