Quote:
Originally Posted by Traum
If I am understanding things correctly, you can get away with powering 3 phase-powered machines without having 3 phases power -- you just need to get yourself a variable frequency drive to convert your typical single phase power into 3 phase, and these things are not expensive at all -- they are literally a couple hundred bucks. But whether there is enough power to supply the machine could potentially be another story.
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Yes and no.
3-phase is not required per se. It's just nice to have it. But that's only true until you have motors running at less than 15hp. Anything beyond that, you can't really do it without 3ph. At least I have not seen anyone hooking those on a single phase power. Plus, you can have multiple things running at the same time (CNCing something and go wreck something with hydraulic press... etc), while without 3phase, you'd have to time them to make sure you are not breaking them.
But it was something crazy like 130k to have it done IIRC. It's going to be cheaper to find a farm with existing 3-phase to rent a barn from them.